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Dessert

Orange Filling

A sweet orange filling made with egg yolks, orange rind, sugar, orange and lemon juice, water, corn starch, and salt.

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

Prepare

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Grate the rind of one orange and mix it with the sugar.

  3. Add the juice of the two oranges and the lemon to the mixture.

  4. Stir in the hot water and corn starch.

Cook

  1. Cook all ingredients together in a double boiler until thickened.

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 + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together586 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

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
Add richness and help set the filling as it thickens.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the citrus acidity.
Orange juice
Provides the main citrus flavour and liquid for the filling.
Lemon juice
Adds extra acidity that sharpens the orange flavour.
Corn starch
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, set filling when heated.

The step that matters

Cook in a double boiler until thickened. Gentle indirect heat lets the starch swell and the egg yolks thicken without scrambling. Direct high heat can curdle the yolks or scorch the filling.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Orangethe original
  4. Blueberryfits less well

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