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Dessert

Orange Cake

A layered cake made with sponge cake, butter, icing sugar, orange rind, and orange juice, finished with icing sugar and angelica.

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

Why it works: Orange and angelica work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 159 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Orange Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare two rounds of sponge cake as for a jam sandwich.

Make the filling

  1. In an enamelled saucepan, combine butter, icing sugar, grated orange rind, and juice of one orange. Bring to a boil.

  2. Once almost cold, spread the mixture on the cakes and press them firmly together.

Ice and decorate

  1. Moisten sufficient icing sugar with the juice of the remaining orange to ice the cake.

  2. Decorate the cake with rings and diamonds of angelica.

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 + angelicatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together159 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Butter + orangetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,301 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + angelicatop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together487 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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, once cooled, firms the filling so the cakes hold together.
Icing sugar
Sweetens the filling and, moistened with juice, forms a smooth icing for the top.
Orange juice
Adds moisture and bright acidity that balances the sweetness of the filling and icing.
Grated orange rind
Carries the aromatic orange oils, giving the filling its strong citrus flavour.

The step that matters

Let the filling cool until almost cold before spreading. Spreading while the butter and sugar mixture is still hot will make it runny and soak into the sponge, so the cakes will slide apart instead of holding together.

Swap the angelica

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Angelicathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, orange. 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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