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Dessert

Very Good Orange Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with oranges, sugar, milk, bread crumbs, eggs, and topped with Ratafia biscuits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Very Good 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Line a pie dish with puff pastry.

  3. Rub the sugar on the rind of 2 oranges until the yellow is removed.

  4. Combine the sugar and peel in a bowl, then squeeze the juice from all 4 oranges over them, straining through muslin.

Make the custard

  1. Pour the boiling milk over the bread crumbs, add the sugar and orange juice, and mix well.

  2. Beat the 4 eggs and add them to the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into the lined pie dish.

  2. Arrange the Ratafia biscuits on top in a decorative design.

  3. Bake for about 40 minutes.

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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together319 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Orange + biscuittop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together371 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Orange + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard and give it structure as they bake.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the hot milk and help thicken the pudding body.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the crumbs and forms the custard base.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the orange juice.
Oranges
Supply the juice and peel oil that give the pudding its citrus flavour.

The step that matters

Beating and adding the eggs. Eggs must be fully beaten and blended into the warm mixture so they set evenly. Unevenly mixed egg can leave curdled pockets or a loose, uneven texture after baking.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, bread, egg, biscuit. 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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