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Dessert

Orange or Lemon Cream

A custard made with orange or lemon rind, juice, sugar, cream, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 or Lemon Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grate the yellow rind of the oranges or lemons and simmer until it can be beaten into a paste.

  2. Squeeze the juice from the fruit onto the remaining sugar.

  3. In total, use 2 ounces of sugar for a Seville orange or lemon, or 1.5 ounces for a China orange.

Make the cream

  1. In a saucepan, combine the cream, beaten egg yolks, and the fruit rind, and simmer while stirring until almost cold.

  2. Pour the mixture over the juice and sugar, then stir or beat until completely cold.

Serve

  1. Serve in glasses or custard cups.

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

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

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  4. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Orange + creamtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,170 recipes

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

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

Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy body to the set dessert.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream as they gently heat, giving the dessert structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and balances the sharpness of the citrus juice.
Oranges or lemons
Provide the juice for acidity and the rind for bright citrus aroma.

The step that matters

Simmering the cream with the egg yolks while stirring. Egg yolks thicken as they heat but can curdle or turn grainy if they get too hot or are left unstirred. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and keeps the mixture smooth.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, 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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