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Dessert

Lemon or Orange Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with lemon or orange zest, sugar, fruit pulp, biscuits, brandy, candied peel, butter, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Lemon or Orange Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Rub the zest of the lemons or oranges with the sugar.

  2. Pound the sugar in a mortar and add the cleaned pulp of the fruit.

  3. Mix in the grated biscuits, brandy, and candied peel.

  4. Cream the butter in a bowl, then add the eggs, using only half the whites.

  5. Mix until the eggs and butter are fully incorporated.

  6. Add the other ingredients, mixing continuously.

Bake and serve

  1. Line a pie dish with a rich crust.

  2. Pour the mixture into the lined pie dish.

  3. Bake until set.

  4. Turn out onto a serving dish.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together697 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Biscuit + orangetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together371 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Brandy + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

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

  5. Brandy + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg proteins set on heating, giving the pudding its structure and body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a tender, smooth texture to the filling.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps soften the citrus zest and pulp.
Naples biscuits
Grated biscuits add body and absorb the liquid in the filling.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Egg proteins firm as they heat, so underbaking leaves the filling runny and overbaking makes it dry and curdled. Judge by a set centre rather than a fixed time.

Swap the orange

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

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

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