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Dessert

Orange Pudding

A dessert made with sliced oranges and a sweetened, thickened milk or wine mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Orange Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oranges

  1. Pare and slice the oranges. Sprinkle them generously with sugar.

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk and sweeten to taste. Thicken with cornstarch and flavor with vanilla. Add salt and butter, and mix well.

  2. In a bowl, combine white wine, sugar, egg yolks, and salt. Beat well. Heat over a fire, stirring constantly until thickened.

Assemble and chill

  1. Choose one of the following preparations to cover the fruit. Pour the chosen preparation over the prepared oranges. Set on ice until ready to serve.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Orange + vanillatop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,371 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  5. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Oranges
Provide the main fruit flavor and juice that the pudding is served over.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness through their proteins and fat.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture as its starch swells when heated.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the custard, adding richness and body.
Sugar
Sweetens the oranges and the custard, and draws out juice from the fruit.
Butter
Adds fat for smoothness and a rich mouthfeel in the custard.

The step that matters

Heat the egg yolk mixture while stirring constantly. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if overheated or left still, so constant stirring over gentle heat lets the custard thicken smoothly as the proteins set evenly.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, vanilla, egg, butter, white wine. 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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