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Dessert

Orange Cake

A layered cake with orange-flavored batter and a spreadable orange mixture between layers.

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

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 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.

Prepare the cake

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

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Add the milk, baking powder, egg yolks, and flour; mix well.

  4. Pour the batter into jelly tins and bake until golden.

Make the filling and frosting

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks.

  2. Mix in the orange juice and grated peel with sugar to achieve a spreadable consistency.

Assemble

  1. Once the cake is cool, layer the orange mixture between the cake layers.

  2. Frost the top with the remaining egg whites.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the cake a tender crumb and flavour.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter while adding moisture and colour.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add airy lightness to the frosting.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and become light.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps brown the crust while tenderising the crumb.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites must be whipped until they hold firm peaks; under-whipped whites stay runny and deflate, while over-whipped whites turn dry and grainy and lose their spreadable smoothness.

Swap the orange

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

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

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