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Dessert

Orange Cake

A cake made with eggs, sugar, flour, orange rind, and a filling of orange juice, sugar, boiling water, and corn starch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Orange Cake

Why it works: Orange and corn work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 586 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Orange Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the cake

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine the beaten eggs, sugar, flour, cold water, baking powder, and grated orange rind. Mix until smooth and pour into prepared cake pans.

  3. Bake in the preheated oven until golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, combine the orange juice, sugar, boiling water, and corn starch in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring until thickened to a jelly consistency.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread the filling between the layers of the cake.

  2. Sprinkle the top of the cake with powdered sugar.

  3. For best flavor, make the cake a day in advance.

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

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

  2. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Provide structure and lift, setting the sponge as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once it is set by heat.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown and stay tender.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the cake rise and become light.
Corn starch
Thickens the orange juice mixture into a jelly-like filling.
Orange juice
Adds acidity and bright orange flavor to the filling.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling until thickened. Corn starch thickens only when the mixture reaches a boil and is stirred. Stopping early leaves a runny filling that soaks into the cake layers, while overcooking can break down the starch's thickening power.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, 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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