Skip to main content
Dessert

Orange Cake

A light orange cake with powdered sugar icing and orange rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Orange Cake

Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. 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 batter

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

  2. In a bowl, mix sugar, salt, flour, and baking powder.

  3. Add cold water, egg yolks, and orange juice; mix well.

  4. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  5. Gently fold the egg whites into the batter.

Bake and ice

  1. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake until golden.

  2. For the icing, beat the egg white until stiff, then gradually add powdered sugar.

  3. Mix in the grated rind and juice of the orange.

  4. Spread the icing on the cooled cake layers.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

  5. Flour + orangetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,821 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg 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

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and moisture, while whipped whites lighten the batter and help it rise.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, making the cake rise and become light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.
Orange juice
Adds moisture and bright citrus acidity and flavor to the batter.

The step that matters

Folding the egg whites into the batter. Whipped whites hold air that makes the cake light. Stirring vigorously or overmixing knocks that air out, so the cake bakes up dense instead of airy.

Swap the orange

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

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

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

More orange cake recipes

Filling 22Almond 6Pineapple 6Seville 4 See all 343 →

You might also like

Orange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesOrange SherbetOrange Sherbet73 recipesOrange CustardOrange Custard56 recipes