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Dessert

Excellent Orange Cream

A custard-like cream made from Seville orange rind, brandy, sugar, egg yolks, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Excellent Orange Cream

Why it works: Orange and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,706 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Excellent Orange Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the orange

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

  2. Beat the rind finely in a mortar.

Make the cream

  1. Add the brandy, orange juice, loaf sugar, and egg yolks.

  2. Beat the mixture for ten minutes.

  3. Gradually pour in the boiling water while stirring.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

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

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 it a rich, smooth body as they set gently with heat.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the cream and balances the sharpness of the orange juice.
Seville orange rind
Supplies the bitter aromatic oils and flavour that define the cream.
Brandy
Adds aroma and a warm note that carries the orange flavour.

The step that matters

Gradually pour in the boiling water while stirring. Adding the hot water slowly while stirring warms the egg yolks gently and evenly. Pouring it in quickly can scramble the yolks and leave the cream grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, 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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