Skip to main content
Dessert

Orange Pudding

A chilled citrus pudding made with sugar, lemon, oranges, cornstarch, and whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and orange 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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lemon syrup

  1. Pour 1 pint of boiling water over 2 cups of sugar and the finely cut lemon.

  2. Wet 3 tablespoons of cornstarch with a little milk, then add to the boiling mixture.

  3. Simmer for 5 minutes.

Assemble and chill

  1. Slice 4 oranges and lay them in a glass dish, then sprinkle with a little powdered sugar.

  2. Pour the cooled lemon and cornstarch mixture over the oranges.

  3. Whip the egg whites with a little sugar and flavor with lemon essence.

  4. Pour the whipped egg whites over the top and let it chill until icy cold.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Cornstarch
Thickens the lemon liquid into a set, spoonable custard layer.
Egg whites
Whipped to form a light foam that tops the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and helps dissolve the lemon flavor into the syrup.
Oranges
Provide fresh citrus flavor and juicy moisture beneath the thickened layer.

The step that matters

Cooling the lemon and cornstarch mixture before pouring. Cornstarch thickens as it cools, so the mixture must be cooled before it goes over the oranges; pouring it hot can melt the foam and disturb the layers.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Blueberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, 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.

More orange pudding recipes

Lemon 10Baked 5Steamed 5Banana 4 See all 349 →

You might also like

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