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Dessert

Orange Cream

A custard made from orange and lemon juice, sugar, cornflour, and eggs, served chilled.

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 juice

  1. Juice oranges and lemon, grate lemon rind.

  2. Add water to fruit juice to make 1½ pints of liquid.

  3. Heat mixture and add sugar to taste.

Make the custard

  1. Mix cornflour with a spoonful of cold water until smooth.

  2. Thicken fruit juice with cornflour mixture, letting it boil for 1 minute.

  3. Set aside to cool slightly.

  4. Beat eggs well, then carefully mix them into the cooled liquid.

  5. Return mixture to a gentle heat, stirring constantly until it thickens without boiling.

Serve

  1. Once cooled, serve in custard glasses or over macaroons.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Eggs
Beaten eggs set into the liquid as it heats, giving the custard its body and richness.
Cornflour
Starch swells when boiled with the juice, thickening it into a smooth, pourable base.
Oranges
Juice supplies the main flavour and most of the liquid in the custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharpness of the citrus juice.

The step that matters

Return mixture to a gentle heat without boiling. Egg proteins set and can curdle or scramble if the mixture gets too hot, so stirring constantly over gentle heat keeps the custard smooth and thickened.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, egg, 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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