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Dessert

Orange Cakes

A shortbread-like cake made with flour, egg, butter, milk, and topped with orange marmalade.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Orange Cakes

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.

Prepare

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

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, egg, butter, and enough sweet milk to form a stiff dough.

  3. Roll out the dough as thin as pie crust.

  4. Butter a large baking pan well.

Assemble and bake

  1. Cut the dough into cakes of your desired size and place them on the pan, leaving space between each.

  2. Spread a thin layer of orange marmalade on each cake.

  3. Bake until the pastry is done, then transfer to a baking board to cool.

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

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

  2. Coffee + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Coffee + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together326 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the stiff dough that holds the cakes together.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness and structure as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour in the pastry.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the flour so the mixture comes together into a dough.
Orange marmalade
Adds sweetness and bright citrus flavour, and its sugar caramelises lightly on the surface.

The step that matters

Spread the marmalade thinly. A thick layer of marmalade holds too much sugar and moisture, which can soak into the pastry, keep it soggy, and burn on the surface before the dough is baked through.

Swap the orange

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

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

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