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Dessert

Orleans Pudding

A steamed pudding made with eggs, sugar, marmalade, butter, flour, baking soda, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Orleans Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.

  2. Add the egg yolks, marmalade, and flour, mixing well.

  3. Whip the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk and add it to the mixture.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a buttered mold and cover with buttered paper.

  2. Steam for 1½ hours.

  3. Serve with arrowroot sauce flavored with a little marmalade.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Whipped whites trap air for lift, while yolks add richness and structure to the batter.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and a tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it sets.
Baking soda
Reacts with the marmalade's acidity to produce gas that helps the pudding rise.
Marmalade
Adds sweetness, fruity acidity, and aroma that flavors the pudding.

The step that matters

Fold the whipped egg whites into the mixture. Overmixing or deflating the whites removes the air bubbles that give the pudding lift, leaving it dense instead of light.

“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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