Skip to main content
Dessert

Orange Foam

A dessert made with orange and lemon juice, egg whites, custard, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 Foam

Ingredients

Directions

Make the orange foam

  1. In a saucepan, combine hot water and sugar.

  2. Wet corn starch with cold water, then add to the boiling mixture.

  3. Stir and cook for 4-5 minutes, then add orange and lemon juice.

  4. Beat egg whites until stiff, then pour cooled corn starch mixture over them and beat rapidly.

  5. Set aside in a cool place.

Make the custard and serve

  1. Make a custard by heating milk, sugar, egg yolks, and vanilla until thick.

  2. Pour custard over the orange foam and serve in small glasses.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Orange + vanillatop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Corn starch
Thickens the juice mixture so it can hold the beaten egg whites in a foam.
Egg whites
Whipped into stiff peaks to give the foam its light, airy structure.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they heat, giving it a rich, smooth body.
Sugar
Sweetens the foam and custard and helps stabilise the whipped mixture.
Milk
Forms the base of the custard, adding richness and body.

The step that matters

Pouring the cooled corn starch mixture into the egg whites. The starch mixture must be cool before it meets the whipped egg whites; hot liquid would deflate the foam and cause the egg whites to cook unevenly. Beating rapidly then keeps the air incorporated so the foam stays light.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Blueberryfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, corn, orange, egg, milk, vanilla. 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipes