Name: Orange Pudding
Ingredients: 3 sponge biscuits; 1 cup milk (for paste); 3 eggs; 1 lemon (juice and grated peel); 1 cup orange juice; 1 cup sugar; ½ cup melted butter

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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Grate the sponge biscuits into enough milk to make a paste.

Make the filling

Beat the eggs and stir them into the paste along with the juice and grated peel of the lemon.
Add the orange juice, sugar, and melted butter to the mixture and stir well.

Bake

Pour the mixture into a dish lined with puff pastry.
Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for 1 hour.

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.

Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Biscuit + lemontop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together697 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Biscuit + orangetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together371 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Set the filling and give it a custard-like structure as they cook.
Sponge biscuits: Form a soft base that thickens the filling and adds body.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the citrus juices.
Butter: Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the filling.
Orange juice: Adds moisture and citrus flavour to the filling.

Swap the orange

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

Vanillafits better
Figfits about as well
Blueberryfits about as well
Orangethe original

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