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Dessert

Orange Pudding

A custard pudding of oranges topped with meringue, baked until lightly browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Coffee and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,202 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Orange Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the custard

  1. Place the orange pieces in a pudding dish and sprinkle with coffee sugar.

  2. In a saucepan, combine milk, egg yolks, sugar, and corn starch to make a boiled custard.

  3. Cook the custard until thickened.

  4. Pour the thickened custard over the oranges.

Make the meringue and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually add powdered sugar to the stiff egg whites to make a meringue.

  3. Spread the meringue over the pudding.

  4. Brown the meringue slightly in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

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. Coffee + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Orange + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together586 recipes

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

  4. Orange + coffeetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together326 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

  5. Coffee + corntop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together247 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Oranges
Provide the fruit base and bright citrus flavor under the custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness to its texture.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the structure of the meringue.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth boiled custard.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard.
Powdered sugar
Stabilizes the whipped egg whites and sweetens the meringue.

The step that matters

Cook the custard until thickened. Cornstarch thickens only when the mixture reaches a full simmer and is stirred, and undercooked starch leaves the custard thin. Egg yolks also need gentle heat to thicken without scrambling, so cook steadily and stop once it coats a spoon.

Swap the orange

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

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

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

More orange pudding recipes

Lemon 10Baked 5Steamed 5Banana 4 See all 349 →

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