Skip to main content
Dessert

Orange Pudding

A baked orange custard topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Orange Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice and base

  1. Juice oranges to yield 4 cups of juice and set the juice to boil.

  2. Grate orange peel and place it in a baking dish.

  3. Add sugar, beaten egg yolks, butter, and cornstarch mixed with cold water or orange juice to the baking dish.

  4. Stir well and warm the mixture on the stove.

  5. Add the boiling juice and stir until thickened.

Bake and top with meringue

  1. Bake for about 30 minutes.

  2. Make a meringue with egg whites, thickened with powdered sugar, and spread it on top of the pudding.

  3. Return the pudding to the oven until the meringue is lightly browned.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Orange + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness and a smooth, creamy texture.
Cornstarch
Thickens the orange mixture as it heats, giving the pudding its body.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the meringue topping and sets as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilize the meringue.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling juice and stirring until thickened. Cornstarch only thickens fully when it reaches a boil with constant stirring; stirring prevents lumps and scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More orange pudding recipes

Lemon 10Baked 5Steamed 5Banana 4 See all 349 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesOrange SherbetOrange Sherbet73 recipes