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Dessert

Orange Butter

A sweet butter made with hard‑boiled eggs, sugar, butter, blanched almonds, and orange‑flower water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,125 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Orange Butter

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the shells from the hard-boiled eggs and beat them in a mortar.

  2. Add the sugar, butter, and blanched almonds, and mix well.

  3. Moisten the mixture with orange-flower water.

Finish and serve

  1. Rub the mixture through a colander onto a dish.

  2. Serve with sweet biscuits.

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. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Provide the main body and rich, smooth texture of the spread.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the mixture hold together smoothly.
Fine sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the flavour of the eggs and almonds.
Blanched almonds
Contribute body and a nutty flavour that gives the spread some texture.
Orange-flower water
Adds a fragrant aroma and moisture, loosening the mixture.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through a colander. Pressing the mixture through a colander breaks down any lumps of egg, butter, and almond, producing a smooth, even texture. Skipping or rushing this step leaves the spread grainy.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, almond. 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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