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Dessert

Orange Cake

A sponge cake flavored with oranges and lemons, topped with a citrus icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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. Make a sponge cake by beating the eggs very light and mixing in the sugar and creamed butter.

  3. Pour in half the milk and dissolve the cream of tartar and baking soda in the other half.

  4. Quickly add the sifted flour after pouring in the foaming milk.

  5. Bake in jelly-cake pans until golden.

Make the icing and assemble

  1. For the icing, grate the peel and squeeze the juice of the oranges and lemons into a bowl.

  2. Add the powdered sugar to the juice and mix until smooth.

  3. Spread the icing between the layers of the cake and on top of the final layer.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Beaten light to trap air, giving the sponge its structure and lift.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once set by the heat of baking.
Butter
Creamed with the sugar to add richness and a tender crumb.
Cream of tartar
Reacts with baking soda in the milk to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the cream of tartar and milk to produce lift.
Oranges
Provide juice and peel for the icing, adding acidity and citrus aroma.

The step that matters

Quickly add the sifted flour after pouring in the foaming milk. The cream of tartar and baking soda react immediately when liquid is added, releasing gas. Delaying the flour lets that gas escape before the batter sets, so the cake rises less well.

Swap the orange

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

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

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