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Dessert

Orange Conserve Eor Puddings

A preserve made from Seville oranges, sugar, clarified butter, and egg yolks, used for cheesecakes or pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Orange Conserve Eor Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oranges

  1. Wash and soak the oranges in spring water for three days, changing the water morning and night.

  2. Boil the oranges until tender enough to pierce with a pin, then drain and weigh them.

  3. For each pound of oranges, use 2 cups of sugar, reduce it to a fine powder.

Make the conserve

  1. Cut the oranges in half, remove the seeds and coarse skin, then beat them with the sugar in a large bowl.

  2. Pick out any bits of fiber or coarse skin that cannot be reduced to a paste.

  3. Once smooth, transfer the conserve to small jars for storage; it requires no boiling.

Make cheesecakes or pudding

  1. To make cheesecakes or pudding, mix 2 tablespoons of conserve with the egg yolks, 2 ounces of sugar, and clarified butter until smooth.

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. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Orange + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,301 recipes

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

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Seville oranges
Provide the bitter pulp and peel that form the body and flavour of the conserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the conserve and, in quantity, helps preserve it against spoilage.
Egg yolks
Enrich the cheesecake or pudding mixture and help it set when cooked.
Clarified butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the cheesecake or pudding a smooth, tender texture.

The step that matters

Beating the oranges into a smooth paste. Any remaining fibre or coarse skin will leave a stringy, uneven texture, so the cooked fruit must be fully reduced and picked clean before it is stored.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg. 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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