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Dessert

Orange Butter

A custard made from orange zest, eggs, and cream, set in a mold.

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 ↓

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 custard

  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.

Set

  1. Pour into a mold or small pots.

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

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

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

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

  4. Egg + creamtop 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the cream as they set, giving the butter a rich, smooth body.
Egg whites
Add protein that helps the mixture set and hold its shape.
Cream
Provides fat and moisture, creating the rich, creamy base of the dish.
Oranges
Supply the citrus aroma and flavor from the zest and the rubbed skins.

The step that matters

Add the eggs to the boiling cream and stir until it curdles. Eggs thicken when heated, but if the cream is too hot or stirred poorly the eggs can scramble into lumps instead of forming a smooth custard.

Swap the orange

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

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

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