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Dessert

Orange and Lemon Puddings

A custard pudding made with egg yolks, sugar, biscuit, marmalade or zest, and butter, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 and Lemon Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg yolks until thick and white.

  2. Gradually add the sugar while continuing to beat.

  3. Mix in the marmalade or orange zest.

  4. Incorporate the crushed biscuit and mix well.

  5. Add the fresh butter and mix until light.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Biscuit + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together697 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Biscuit + orangetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together371 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Biscuit + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Provide richness and, when beaten, air and structure that set the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilise the beaten yolks.
Biscuit
Adds body and a dry crumb that thickens the batter.
Marmalade or orange zest
Adds citrus aroma and a slight bitterness that flavours the pudding.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, tender texture and rich mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Beat the egg yolks until thick and white. Trapping air in the yolks and sugar gives the pudding its light texture. Under-beaten yolks produce a dense result, while the set in the oven depends on the egg proteins coagulating evenly.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Blueberryfits about as well
  3. Orangethe original
  4. Raisinfits about as well

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