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Dessert

Orange Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, milk, flour, baking powder, orange zest, orange juice, lemon juice, and a cooked orange filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Orange Cake

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 Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the cake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream the butter and gradually add the sugar.

  3. Beat in the eggs and milk.

  4. Mix the flour with the baking powder and add to the mixture.

  5. Pour the batter into a dripping pan and bake until golden.

  6. Once baked, cut the cake in half.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, mix the sugar, flour, grated orange rind, orange juice, lemon juice, beaten egg, and butter in the order given.

  2. Cook the filling in a double boiler for 10 minutes, stirring constantly.

  3. Cool the filling before spreading it between the cake layers.

Assemble

  1. Cover the top layer with frosting flavored with orange.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the crumb as it is creamed with sugar.
Eggs
Provide structure and help bind the batter as the cake sets.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake and thickens the filling.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown while baking.
Orange juice
Adds acidity and bright orange flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Cook the filling in a double boiler. Cooking gently over simmering water while stirring constantly thickens the filling evenly, since the egg can curdle or scorch if it gets too hot.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, milk, flour, lemon. 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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