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Dessert

Orange Pudding

A baked pudding made with grated Seville orange rind, butter, sugar, eggs, apple, and pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Orange and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,230 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Orange Pudding

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.

Prepare

  1. Grate the rind of the Seville orange.

  2. Line the bottom and sides of a dish with pastry.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, beat together the grated orange rind, butter, and sugar until well combined.

  2. Add the beaten and strained eggs to the mixture gradually.

  3. Scrape the raw apple and mix it in.

Bake

  1. Pour the orange mixture into the dish and place cross bars of pastry on top.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 30 minutes.

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 + appletop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  2. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

Sugar and apple barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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
Set the custard-like filling and add richness and structure as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, smooth texture to the filling.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps create a tender texture when creamed with butter.
Seville orange rind
Provides the bright, bitter aromatic flavour that defines the pudding.
Raw apple
Adds moisture and body to the filling.

The step that matters

Add the eggs gradually. Adding beaten eggs slowly to the butter and sugar mixture helps it stay smooth and emulsified. Adding them all at once can cause the mixture to curdle or separate.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

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