Skip to main content
Dessert

Orange Pudding

A baked dessert made from bread, orange, coconut, sugar, butter, milk, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Orange Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the base

  1. Combine diced bread, butter, sugar, coconut, and grated orange rind in a bowl.

  2. Boil the milk and pour the boiled milk over the bread mixture.

  3. Allow the mixture to soak and cool.

Finish and bake

  1. Once cool, add lemon juice and orange juice.

  2. Beat the egg and stir the beaten egg into the mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered pie dish.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for thirty minutes.

  5. Serve immediately.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Coconut + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Orange + coconuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together584 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

White bread
Soaks up the milk and sets into a soft, custard-like body as it bakes.
Egg
Binds the mixture and sets during baking to give the pudding structure.
Milk
Softens the bread and adds moisture and richness to the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and softness, and keeps the dish from sticking.
Orange
Supplies aroma and bright flavour from the rind, plus juice for acidity.

The step that matters

Let the bread soak and cool before adding the egg. Bread needs time to absorb the hot milk fully. Adding beaten egg to very hot liquid can scramble it, so cooling first keeps the pudding smooth and evenly set.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, coconut, sugar, lemon, butter, milk. 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 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipes