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Dessert

Orange Cream

A chilled gelatin dessert flavored with orange and lemon juice, sweetened with sugar and thickened with gelatin.

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

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 ↓

Orange Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the flavoured sugar

  1. Rub the rind of one orange into the sugar, then scrape the rind off with a knife.

Make the set mixture

  1. Mix the orange juice, lemon juice, and sugar together.

  2. Dissolve the gelatin in the boiling water and stir into the mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into a mold and refrigerate until set.

Turn out and serve

  1. Turn out the cream as you would jelly.

  2. Enjoy with or without additional cream.

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

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

  2. Cream + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Sugar + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Gelatin
Sets the liquid mixture into a firm, sliceable shape as it cools.
Orange juice
Provides the main citrus flavour and fruity acidity.
Lemon juice
Adds sharper acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar.
White sugar
Sweetens the mixture and absorbs orange oils from the rind.
Orange rind
Contributes fragrant orange oils that flavour the sugar.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatin fully in the boiling water. Gelatin only sets properly when its granules are completely dissolved. Undissolved grains leave gritty specks and weak patches, so the mixture may not hold its shape when turned out.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, orange, sugar, gelatin):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits about as well
  3. Pineapplefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, orange, sugar, gelatin. 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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