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Dessert

639 Orange Butter

A custard-like dessert made from orange zest, egg yolks, cream, and sugar, set in molds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓

639 Orange Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the orange

  1. Zest the oranges and boil the skins until clear.

  2. Pound the skins and rub them through a sieve.

Make the butter

  1. Beat the yolks and whites of the eggs.

  2. Add the eggs to the boiling cream and stir until it curdles.

  3. Strain the mixture and beat it in a mortar.

  4. Add enough orange zest for flavor and sweeten to taste.

  5. Pour into a mold or small pots.

Optional variation

  1. Optionally, use artificial cream and bake as cheesecakes, adding wine or brandy.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Orange + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,046 recipes

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

  3. Cream + winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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 as they set, giving the butter its rich, smooth body.
Egg whites
Add extra protein that helps the mixture set and hold its structure.
Cream
Provides fat and richness, carrying the flavor and giving a soft, smooth texture.
Oranges
Supply the aromatic oil and flavor from the zest and the bitter notes from the boiled skins.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs to the boiling cream. Egg proteins set when heated, so the mixture curdles if it gets too hot or is stirred too little. Adding the eggs gradually and stirring constantly keeps it smooth and thickened rather than grainy.

Swap the orange

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

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

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