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Sauce

Orange Sauce

A thickened orange sauce made with corn starch, egg, butter, sugar, and orange juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and orange 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 Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Dissolve corn starch in a small amount of water.

  2. Pour boiling water over the corn starch to make a thick, smooth paste.

  3. Stir in the beaten egg, butter, and sugar.

  4. Cook until thickened.

  5. Add the juice of two oranges.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Corn + orangetop 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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Sugar and orange 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

Corn starch
Thickens the sauce as it gelatinizes when heated, giving body and a smooth texture.
Beaten egg
Adds richness and helps thicken the sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of the orange juice.
Orange juice
Provides bright citrus flavour and acidity.

The step that matters

Cook until thickened. Corn starch needs to reach a boil or near-boil to fully swell and thicken. Stopping early leaves the sauce thin, while overheating the egg can make it curdle or grainy.

Swap the orange

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

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

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