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Dessert

Orange Pudding

A custard pudding made with milk, cornstarch, eggs, butter, sugar, salt, and oranges.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oranges

  1. Remove seeds from the oranges and sprinkle them with sugar.

Make the custard

  1. Combine milk, cornstarch, egg yolks, butter, sugar, and salt in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over medium heat until thickened.

Assemble and brown

  1. Pour the custard over the sugared oranges.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff and spread them on top of the pudding.

  3. Brown the top slightly under a broiler.

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the base of the custard that sets into the pudding.
Cornstarch
Thickens the custard as it cooks, giving it body.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the custard, adding richness and smoothness.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel in the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and the oranges.
Oranges
Provide bright citrus acidity and flavor under the custard.

The step that matters

Cook the custard until thickened. Cornstarch thickens only when the mixture reaches a full simmer while being stirred. Undercooked custard stays thin and runny, while overheating can scorch the milk on the bottom of the saucepan.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, 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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