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Dessert

Orange Butter

A sweet butter mixture flavored with orange‑flower water, served with biscuits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and biscuit match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 388 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Orange Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  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 until smooth.

  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 + biscuittop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together388 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

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

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

  4. Orange + biscuittop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together371 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Butter + biscuittop 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

Hard-boiled eggs
Provide the bulk and rich, smooth body of the paste.
Fine sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the paste hold a soft, smooth texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, spreadable texture.
Blanched almonds
Contribute nutty flavour and a fine, slightly grainy body when ground.
Orange-flower water
Adds a floral citrus aroma and moistens the mixture.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a colander. Pressing the paste through a colander breaks up any lumps left after beating, giving the smooth texture the dish depends on. Skipping or rushing this step leaves a coarse, uneven result.

Swap the orange

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

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

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