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Dessert

Orange Filling

A sweet orange filling made with sugar, egg yolks, cornstarch or flour, orange juice, boiling water, lemon juice, butter, and orange rind.

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

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar, egg yolks, cornstarch (or flour), orange juice, and boiling water.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until thickened.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in lemon juice, butter, and grated orange rind.

  4. Let cool before using as a filling.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Flour and butter 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

Egg yolks
Add richness and help thicken the filling as they set with heat.
Cornstarch
Thickens the filling into a smooth, glossy custard when heated with liquid.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the citrus juices.
Orange juice
Provides the main orange flavor and liquid for the filling.

The step that matters

Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until thickened. Egg yolks and starch can scorch or lump if left unstirred on heat. Constant stirring keeps the mixture even, and the starch must thicken fully to set properly as it cools.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, flour, lemon, butter. 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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