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Dessert

Orange or Pineapple Pudding

A custard-like pudding made from oranges, milk, sugar, cornstarch, and eggs, finished with a browned egg white topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,696 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Orange or Pineapple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oranges

  1. Combine orange pieces and ½ cup sugar in a bowl; let stand overnight.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, bring 1 quart of nearly boiling milk to a boil.

  2. Mix 2 tablespoons cornstarch with cold milk; add to boiling milk along with beaten egg yolks.

  3. Cook until thickened; let cool and spread over oranges.

Top and serve

  1. Beat egg whites with ½ cup sugar until stiff; spread over pudding.

  2. Brown top under broiler or in hot oven.

  3. Serve warm or cold.

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

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  4. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Oranges
Provide the fruit base and bright citrus flavour of the pudding.
Milk
Forms the body of the custard that sets when thickened.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth custard as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard, adding richness and help with thickening.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a stiff meringue topping that browns.

The step that matters

Cook the custard until thickened. Cornstarch needs to reach a full boil while stirred to swell and thicken; undercooked starch leaves the custard thin and runny. Egg yolks must be stirred in gently to avoid scrambling.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, 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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