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Dessert

Orange Custard

A custard made with orange and lemon juice, sugar, eggs, cornflour, and water.

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

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 Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Combine the orange and lemon juice with enough water to make 1½ pints of liquid.

  2. Heat the mixture with the sugar in an enamel saucepan.

Thicken

  1. Smooth the cornflour with a little cold water.

  2. Once the liquid is boiling, thicken it with the cornflour mixture.

  3. Remove the saucepan from heat and let it cool slightly.

Finish the custard

  1. Beat the eggs and gradually stir in the thickened liquid.

  2. Continue preparing the custard as directed in previous recipes.

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
Thicken and enrich the custard as they set gently with the hot liquid.
Cornflour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, sliceable custard as it heats.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the citrus juice.
Orange juice
Provides the main flavour and liquid base of the custard.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the orange flavour.

The step that matters

Beat the eggs and gradually stir in the thickened liquid. Adding the liquid gradually, after it has cooled slightly, warms the eggs gently. Pouring hot liquid in all at once can scramble the eggs, leaving the custard lumpy instead of smooth.

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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