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Dessert

Orange Cake

A moist cake flavored with orange zest and juice, baked in a loaf pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Orange Cake

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the beaten yolks of the eggs, salt, and grated orange rind.

  3. Beat in the orange juice and sifted flour mixed with baking powder.

  4. Fold in the stiffly whipped egg whites.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in a loaf pan at 350°F (175°C) until done.

  2. Once cool, spread with orange frosting.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter and whites, whipped stiff, lighten the crumb through trapped air.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness, and carries flavour into the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the creamed butter hold air for a lighter texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Orange juice
Adds moisture and bright citrus acidity to the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold the cake's rise, so folding gently keeps the air in. Stirring vigorously deflates the foam and produces a dense, flat cake.

Swap the orange

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

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

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