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Dessert

Seville Orange, or Lemon Posset

A chilled dessert made by curdling cream or milk with citrus juice and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Seville Orange, or Lemon Posset

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Squeeze the juice of the Seville orange or lemon into a glass dish and sweeten with fine sugar.

  2. Warm the cream over low heat with a piece of lemon peel, but do not let it boil.

Make the posset

  1. Pour the warm cream into the juice from a height to froth and curdle it.

  2. If using milk, thicken it with 1-2 egg yolks instead of cream.

  3. Serve in a bowl or tureen.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Orange + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cream
Provides richness and fat, and sets into a smooth, thick body when curdled by the acid.
Lemon juice
Acid that curdles the cream and gives the posset its sharp, bright flavour.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the juice and balances its acidity.
Egg yolks
Thicken milk in place of cream, adding richness and body to the set dessert.

The step that matters

Pouring the warm cream into the juice. Pour from a height so the cream is well aerated and the acid curdles it evenly. Cream that boils may not set smoothly, so keep it warm, not boiling.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits about as well
  3. Orangethe original
  4. Figfits about as well

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