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Dessert

A Boiled Orange Pudding

A boiled orange pudding made with orange rind, Naples biscuits, cream, eggs, sugar, and salt.

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 ↓

A Boiled Orange Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Beat the grated rind of the oranges in a mortar to make a paste.

  2. Soak the Naples biscuits in the cream.

  3. Mix the orange paste with the soaked biscuits and add sugar to taste.

  4. Incorporate the well-beaten eggs and a pinch of salt.

Boil and serve

  1. Tie the mixture in a floured pudding cloth.

  2. Boil in a pan of water for 1 hour.

  3. Serve with sweet sauce.

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Biscuit + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Biscuit + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,874 recipes

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

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

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

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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set into a firm, sliceable pudding as it cooks.
Naples biscuits
Soak up the cream and give the pudding its body and crumb.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the biscuits into the custard base.
Seville oranges
Provide bitter citrus aroma and flavour from the grated rind.

The step that matters

Tie the mixture in a floured pudding cloth. The cloth must be sealed snugly but given room to expand. Too tight a seal can burst or squeeze the pudding, while a loose one lets water in and dilutes the texture.

Swap the orange

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

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

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