Skip to main content
Dessert

Orange-Custard

A custard made with Seville orange rind, brandy, orange juice, sugar, egg yolks, and boiling cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and cream 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-Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Boil the rind of the Seville orange until tender.

  2. Beat the rind finely in a mortar.

  3. Add brandy, orange juice, sugar, and egg yolks to the mortar.

  4. Beat the mixture for 10 minutes.

  5. Gradually pour in the boiling cream while continuing to beat.

  6. Keep beating until cold.

Set and serve

  1. Pour into cups.

  2. Place cups in a dish of hot water until set.

  3. Remove from water.

  4. Top with preserved orange.

  5. Serve hot or cold.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Orange + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

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

  3. Brandy + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  4. Brandy + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  5. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Brandy and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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 and give the custard its rich, smooth set.
Boiling cream
Provides fat and body, setting into a silky, creamy texture as it cools.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps balance the bitterness of the orange rind.
Seville orange rind
Supplies the characteristic bitter orange aroma and flavour.
Seville orange juice
Adds acidity and bright citrus flavour to the custard.

The step that matters

Gradually pour in the boiling cream while continuing to beat. Pouring hot cream in slowly while beating keeps the egg yolks from scrambling. Adding it all at once can curdle the custard, leaving it grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the orange

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

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

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

More orange custard recipes

Pudding 8Pie 6Preserved 4Seville 4 See all 86 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesOrange SherbetOrange Sherbet73 recipes