Skip to main content
Dessert

Seville Orange, or Lemon Posset

A chilled dessert made by mixing citrus juice with sweetened cream or thickened milk, then frothing and curdling.

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

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 in a saucepan with the 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 egg yolks before adding to the juice.

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

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

  4. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  5. Orange + creamtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,170 recipes

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

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

Cream
Provides richness and body, setting into a smooth, thick texture when it meets the acid.
Lemon juice
Acidity curdles the cream, causing it to thicken and set into the posset.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the juice and balances its sharp acidity.
Egg yolks
Thicken milk when used in place of cream, adding richness and body.

The step that matters

Pour the warm cream into the juice from a height. Pouring from a height aerates the cream and helps it curdle evenly as the acid reacts with it. Cream that is boiled or poured in carelessly may set unevenly or fail to thicken properly.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Limefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, lemon. 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 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipes