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Dessert

Orange Pudding

A custard-like dessert made with oranges, milk, sugar, cornstarch, eggs, and topped with a sugared egg white frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Prepare the orange base

  1. Peel, seed, and cut the oranges into small pieces.

  2. Add the sugar to the oranges and let them stand.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, stir the cornstarch mixed with a little water into the nearly boiling milk.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks to the milk mixture and let it cool.

  3. Mix the cooled mixture with the oranges.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites and gradually add ½ cup sugar to make a frosting.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the frosting on top of the pudding.

  3. Place the pudding in the oven to 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. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Thicken the milk mixture and add richness to the pudding.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth, set custard.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a frosting that browns on top.
Oranges
Provide the main flavour and juicy pieces throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the oranges, the pudding and the frosting.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks to the hot milk. Egg yolks scramble if they meet very hot liquid too quickly. Cornstarch must also be fully thickened in the hot milk before the yolks go in, so the custard stays smooth.

Swap the orange

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

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

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