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Dessert

Orange Cream Dessert

A custard-like dessert made with egg yolks, powdered sugar, Rhine wine, orange and lemon juice, water, butter, and folded egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 Dessert

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Combine egg yolks, powdered sugar, Rhine wine, orange juice, lemon juice, and water in a saucepan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil, then add the butter and boil for 3 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool.

Finish and serve

  1. Once cooled, fold in the beaten egg whites.

  2. Serve in glasses.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Wine + orangetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,046 recipes

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

  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

Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture as they cook and give it a rich, creamy body.
Egg whites
Folded in at the end to lighten the texture and add airy volume.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the dessert and dissolves smoothly into the liquid.
Orange juice
Provides the main citrus flavour and acidity.
Rhine wine
Adds liquid and a fruity, aromatic note to the base.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites after cooling. If the mixture is still warm, the beaten whites can deflate and lose their foam, so the dessert turns dense instead of light. Letting it cool first keeps the whites intact.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, wine, lemon, 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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