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Dessert

Orange Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with crumbled lady's fingers, milk, eggs, sugar, corn starch, butter, orange juice and peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Orange Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the crumbled lady's fingers in milk.

  2. Whip the eggs and sugar until light, then add the melted butter.

  3. Stir in the corn starch mixture.

  4. Butter a mold and bring a pot of water to a boil.

Cook and serve

  1. Quickly stir in the orange juice and peel, then pour the mixture into the mold.

  2. Plunge the mold into the boiling water and boil for one hour.

  3. Serve with a sweet sauce, such as brandy.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + orangetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together586 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Milk + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped with sugar to trap air and set the pudding into a tender custard structure.
Lady's fingers
Soaked in milk, they soften and absorb the custard, giving the pudding its body.
Corn starch
Thickens the liquid custard as it heats, helping the pudding hold its shape when steamed.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps whipped eggs stay light and stable.
Milk
Provides the liquid that soaks the cake and forms the custard base.

The step that matters

Plunge the mold into the boiling water and boil for one hour. The mold must be fully submerged in steadily boiling water so the pudding cooks gently and evenly. Too little water or weak boiling can leave the centre underset or the texture uneven.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, 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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