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Dessert

Orange Pudding

A custard pudding made with sliced oranges, milk, sugar, corn starch, eggs, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Orange Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk until nearly boiling.

  2. Mix corn starch with a little cold milk, then add to the hot milk.

  3. Stir in the sugar and beaten egg yolks.

  4. Boil until thick like custard, then let cool.

Assemble and top

  1. Pour the custard over the sliced oranges.

  2. Make a meringue by beating the egg whites and adding the small teacup of sugar.

  3. Spread the meringue over the pudding and top with sliced oranges.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Orange + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together586 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Orange + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Corn starch
Thickens the custard as it boils, giving it a soft, sliceable body.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the custard, adding richness and smooth body.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the light meringue topping.
Milk
Forms the base of the custard that sets when thickened and cooled.

The step that matters

Boil the custard until thick. Corn starch only thickens fully once it reaches a boil, so stopping early leaves a thin custard. Stirring keeps the starch and egg yolks from scorching or lumping on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, corn, egg. 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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