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Dessert

Buttered Orange-juice

A custard made from Seville orange juice, rose water, eggs, powdered sugar, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and rose work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 876 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Buttered Orange-juice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Juice the Seville oranges and mix with rose water.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks and egg whites until well combined.

  3. Strain the orange juice mixture into the eggs and add powdered sugar.

Cook and serve

  1. Stir over gentle heat until it begins to thicken.

  2. Add the butter and continue stirring for a few more minutes.

  3. Pour into a flat dish and let it cool before serving.

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. Orange + rosetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together876 recipes

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

  2. Orange + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set with gentle heat, giving it a rich body.
Egg whites
Add structure and lightness to the custard as they combine with the yolks.
Seville oranges
Provide the acidic citrus juice that flavours the custard.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the custard and dissolves smoothly into the liquid mixture.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the finished custard.

The step that matters

Stir over gentle heat until it begins to thicken. Egg proteins set at moderate temperatures, so high heat or neglect can curdle the eggs and leave the custard grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Pecansfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, rose, egg, 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.

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