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Dessert

Orange Filling

A sweet orange and lemon filling made with sugar, egg, cornstarch, and dates, used to top cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Filling

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine the grated orange rind, orange juice, lemon juice, sugar, and beaten egg.

  2. Dissolve the cornstarch in a little cold water and add it to the mixture.

  3. Boil the mixture until thickened, then remove from heat.

  4. Stir in chopped dates and spread the filling on cakes.

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. Orange + datestop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together151 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + datestop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together985 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Lemon and sugar 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
Thickens the filling as it cooks and adds richness to the custard.
Cornstarch
Thickens the juice and sugar mixture into a spreadable filling when boiled.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharp citrus juices.
Orange juice
Supplies the main citrus flavour and liquid for the filling.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until thickened. Cornstarch needs to reach a boil to fully gelatinize and thicken; stopping early leaves a thin filling, while the egg can curdle if overheated too hard.

Swap the dates

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Datesthe original

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

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