Name: Orange Pudding
Ingredients: oranges; powdered sugar; cornstarch; water

Why it works: Orange and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Orange Pudding

Ingredients

oranges
powdered sugar
cornstarch
water

Directions

Prepare the oranges

Peel and slice the oranges very thin.
Sprinkle the slices with powdered sugar.

Make the pudding

Prepare a cornstarch blanc-mange according to package instructions.
Pour the blanc-mange over the oranges.
Set the dish in the refrigerator until ready to serve.

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.

Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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

Oranges: Provide the fruit flavour and a bright, juicy layer under the pudding.
Powdered sugar: Sweetens the orange slices and draws out some of their juice.
Cornstarch: Thickens the liquid into a set, creamy blanc-mange.

“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.