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Dessert

Orange Creams

A custard made with Seville orange rind, brandy, sugar, egg yolks, and cream, chilled in cups.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Orange Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Boil the rind of the Seville orange until tender.

  2. Beat the boiled rind into a pulp.

  3. Add the brandy, strained juice of the orange, and sugar.

  4. Beat together for about 10 minutes.

  5. Incorporate the well-beaten egg yolks.

Make the custard

  1. Bring the cream to a boil.

  2. Gradually pour the hot cream into the mixture while beating until nearly cold.

  3. Pour the mixture into custard cups.

  4. Place the cups in a deep dish of boiling water until completely cool.

  5. Remove the cups from the water.

  6. Wipe the cups.

Garnish

  1. Garnish with candied orange peel or preserved chips.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Orange + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

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

  3. Brandy + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  4. Brandy + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  5. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Brandy and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the cream mixture into a smooth, rich custard as they set gently with heat.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the custard a smooth, creamy texture.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the bitterness of the orange.
Seville orange
Supplies bitter-sharp flavour from its rind and acidity from its juice.

The step that matters

Gradually pour the hot cream into the mixture while beating. Adding hot cream too quickly can scramble the egg yolks, curdling the custard. Pouring slowly while beating tempers the yolks so they thicken smoothly.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, sugar, egg, cream. 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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