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Dessert

Orange Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, water, orange juice, grated rind, sugar, butter, eggs, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Orange Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, water, orange juice, grated orange rind, sugar, butter, eggs, and baking powder, then mix until well combined.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam for 1 hour.

  3. Serve with 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the pudding its body.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during steaming to give a firm crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the batter as it heats.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the orange.
Orange juice
Adds acidity and bright orange flavour.

The step that matters

Steam for 1 hour. The batter needs steady, gentle steam for the whole hour. Baking powder releases its gas while the batter heats, and the eggs and flour set as the pudding cooks. If the steam drops or the mold is not sealed, the pudding can turn dense or dry.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, walnut, 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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