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Dessert

Orange Cream Custard

A custard made with orange zest, lemon juice, cornstarch, sugar, egg yolk, butter, and boiled water, served chilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Orange Cream Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, mix cornstarch and sugar.

  2. Add the juice of 2 oranges, lemon juice, and the grated rind of 1 orange. Stir until smooth.

  3. Incorporate the well-beaten egg yolk and boiling water.

  4. Cook the mixture in a double boiler until thickened.

Assemble and chill

  1. Pour the custard over the pulp of the remaining 2 oranges, which have been finely chopped and sprinkled with powdered sugar.

  2. Let it sit covered for 30 minutes.

  3. Chill thoroughly and serve with whipped cream.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

  3. Orange + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cornstarch
Thickens the custard as it heats, giving it a smooth, spoonable body.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps set the custard as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the citrus acidity.
Oranges
Provide the main citrus flavour from juice, rind and pulp.
Lemon
Adds brightness and acidity that sharpens the orange flavour.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture in a double boiler until thickened. Cornstarch thickens only when heated enough to swell its granules, but direct high heat can scorch the egg yolk or make the custard lumpy. Gentle indirect heat lets it thicken evenly and stay smooth.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Chestnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, egg, orange, 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.

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