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Dessert

Orange Pudding

A dessert made with orange pieces, sugar, corn starch, water, and butter, thickened into a pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and corn work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 586 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Orange Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the orange pieces in the bottom of a pudding dish.

  2. Sprinkle the white sugar over the oranges.

Make and assemble

  1. In a saucepan, combine corn starch with 3 cups of water and cook until thickened.

  2. Pour the corn starch pudding over the oranges and sugar.

Cool

  1. Let the pudding stand and cool before serving.

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 + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together586 recipes

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

  2. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + corntop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Oranges
Provide the fruit flavor and bright acidity that contrast with the sweet pudding.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and draws juice from the oranges, softening the fruit.
Corn starch
Thickens the water into a set pudding as it heats and gelatinizes.

The step that matters

Cook the corn starch until thickened. Corn starch only thickens once it is heated fully and the granules swell and gelatinize. Stopping early leaves a thin, starchy liquid, while overcooking can break down the thickening power and make it gluey.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, corn, 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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