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Dessert

Orange Pudding

A custard made with sweet milk, egg yolks, sugar, cornstarch, orange slices, lemon juice, and grated rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 custard

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. While boiling, stir in the beaten egg yolks and cornstarch mixed with a little water.

  3. Boil for 15 minutes, stirring constantly to prevent curdling.

  4. Once cool, add the lemon juice and grated rind.

Assemble

  1. Peel, seed, and slice the oranges.

  2. Layer the orange slices in a dish and pour the custard over them.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Milk + lemontop 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and enrich it with richness and body as they set.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth custard as it boils.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the tartness of the citrus.
Lemons
Add acidity and aroma from the juice and grated rind.

The step that matters

Stirring the custard while it boils. Egg yolks can curdle and turn grainy if they overheat or sit still. Constant stirring keeps the heat even, so the cornstarch thickens the custard smoothly.

Swap the orange

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

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

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