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Dessert

Orange Pudding

A chilled dessert made with boiling water, sugar, lemon, corn starch, oranges, whipped egg whites, and lemon essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange 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 lemon syrup

  1. Pour boiling water over sugar and finely cut lemon.

  2. Wet corn starch with a little milk and stir into the mixture.

  3. Let it boil, then simmer for 5 minutes.

Assemble and chill

  1. Slice oranges and place them in a glass dish.

  2. Sprinkle sliced oranges with powdered sugar.

  3. Once cool, pour the lemon and corn starch mixture over the oranges.

  4. Whip egg whites with a little sugar and flavor with lemon essence.

  5. Pour the whipped egg whites over the top and refrigerate until icy 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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + orangetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together586 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the lemon liquid into a glossy, spoonable syrup that holds its shape over the oranges.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that forms a light, airy topping over the chilled oranges.
Oranges
Provide the fresh citrus flavor and juicy base of the dessert.
Sugar
Sweetens the lemon liquid and helps stabilize the whipped egg white topping.

The step that matters

Let the cornstarch mixture boil, then simmer. Cornstarch only thickens fully once it reaches a boil, and simmering cooks out its raw starchy taste. Pouring it on too early leaves the syrup thin and floury.

Swap the orange

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

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

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