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Dessert

Orange Filling

A citrus filling made from orange and lemon juice, sugar, water, and cornflour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Orange Filling

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Grate the rind of the oranges and lemon.

  2. Strain the juice; you should have about 1 cup total.

Make the filling

  1. Add the juice to the water and sugar, then bring to a boil.

  2. Mix the cornflour with a little water until smooth, then stir it in.

  3. Boil for a few minutes until thickened.

  4. Pour onto a large plate in a thin, even layer and let cool.

Assemble and finish

  1. Once cool, place between layers of cake.

  2. Ice the top and sides or sprinkle with powdered sugar.

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 + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Cornflour
Thickens the juice and sugar mixture into a spreadable filling when boiled.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps balance the sharpness of the citrus juice.
Oranges
Provide the main juice and citrus flavour of the filling.
Lemon
Adds extra acidity and aroma through its juice and rind.

The step that matters

Boil until thickened. Cornflour only thickens fully once the mixture reaches a boil and is held there for a few minutes. Stopping early leaves a thin filling that will not set properly when cooled.

“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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