Skip to main content
Dessert

Orange Butter

A sweet butter flavored with orange flower water and almond paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Almond and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,125 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Orange Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the butter

  1. In a mortar, beat the sugar and butter together.

  2. Add the beaten blanched almonds and mix well.

  3. Moisten the mixture with orange-flower water.

  4. Rub the mixture through a colander onto a dish.

Serve

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

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Sugar and orange 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

Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, spreadable texture to the mixture.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the butter and helps it beat into a light, creamy base.
Blanched almonds
Provide body and a nutty flavour once beaten to a paste.
Orange-flower water
Adds a floral, orange aroma and moistens the mixture.

Swap the orange

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

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

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

You might also like

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