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Dessert

Orange Pudding

A custard pudding made with milk, eggs, corn starch, oranges, and sugar, topped with beaten egg whites and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Orange Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Make a custard with the egg yolks and ⅓ cup of sugar.

  2. Thicken the custard with corn starch mixed in a little water.

  3. Let the custard cool.

Add the oranges

  1. Cut the oranges into small pieces and sprinkle with ⅓ cup of sugar.

  2. Stir the oranges into the custard.

Bake and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff with ⅓ cup of sugar.

  2. Spread the beaten egg whites over the top.

  3. Bake in the oven until slightly browned, then serve 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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Corn + orangetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together586 recipes

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

  3. Milk + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

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

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 custard and add richness and body to the pudding.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a stiff meringue topping that browns in the oven.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that sets when thickened and cooled.
Corn starch
Thickens the custard so it holds its body when cooled.
Oranges
Provide fresh citrus flavour and juicy pieces throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Let the custard cool before adding the oranges. Corn starch thickens as the custard cools, so the custard needs to be set before the fruit goes in. Stirring the oranges into hot custard can thin it and cause the pieces to sink or release juice unevenly.

Swap the orange

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

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

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