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Dessert

Orange Pudding

A custard pudding made with stale sponge cakes, oranges, eggs, and milk, topped with whipped egg whites and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,696 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Orange Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Cut stale sponge cakes into slices and line the bottom of a pie dish.

  2. Slice the oranges and place them on top of the sponge cakes.

Make the custard

  1. Make a custard by whisking together 1 egg and 1 pint of milk, leaving out the whites of 2 eggs.

  2. Pour the custard over the pudding.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the 2 egg whites to stiff peaks and pile them over the custard.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden brown.

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

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

  2. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Egg + orangetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Egg and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,696 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

Stale sponge cakes
Soak up the custard and form the soft base layer of the pudding.
Eggs
Thicken the milk custard as it sets; whipped whites add airy structure to the topping.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, which sets when heated.
Oranges
Add bright acidity, sweetness and fresh aroma to the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. The oven sets the custard and browns the meringue. The meringue can darken quickly while the custard is still setting, so watch the colour and remove it once golden.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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.

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