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Dessert

Excellent Orange Cream

A custard dessert made with Seville orange rind, brandy, orange juice, sugar, egg yolks, and boiling cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Excellent Orange Cream

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Excellent Orange Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Boil the rind of the Seville orange until tender.

  2. Beat the rind in a mortar with brandy, orange juice, loaf sugar, and egg yolks for 10 minutes.

Make the custard

  1. Gradually pour in the boiling cream while beating until cold.

  2. Pour the mixture into custard cups placed in a deep dish of boiling water.

  3. Let the cups stand until cold again.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Orange + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

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

  3. Brandy + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  4. Brandy + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  5. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Brandy and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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 as they set, giving it a rich, smooth texture.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the custard a smooth, velvety mouthfeel.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the sharp bitterness of the orange.
Seville orange
Provides the main citrus aroma and acidity, with its rind adding fragrant oils.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling cream in gradually while beating. Adding hot cream slowly, while beating, keeps the cold egg yolks from scrambling. Gradual mixing tempers the yolks so the custard stays smooth and thickens evenly.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, sugar, egg, cream. 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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