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Dessert

Orange Short Cake

A short cake made with orange pulp and a sweet orange sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 Short Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the baking powder and flour.

  3. Add the butter and mix thoroughly.

  4. Gradually add milk or water to form a soft dough.

  5. Divide the dough into two cakes and bake until done.

Prepare the filling

  1. Once baked, split the cakes and spread with butter.

  2. Remove pulp from the oranges and sweeten with sugar to taste.

  3. Drain the juice and spread the pulp between the cakes.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, combine water, cornstarch, butter, and sugar in a saucepan.

  2. If desired, add the beaten egg and the orange juice last.

  3. Cook the sauce until thickened and serve with the cake.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the dough once bound with liquid.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the cakes rise and turn light.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the cake and smooth body to the sauce.
Oranges
Provide the main fruit flavor and acidity for the filling.
Cornstarch
Thickens the sauce as it cooks, giving it body.
Egg
Optionally enriches the sauce and helps give it body.

The step that matters

Cook the sauce until thickened. Cornstarch only thickens fully when the sauce reaches a boil and is stirred while cooking. Undercooked starch leaves a thin, cloudy sauce, while overcooking can cause it to thin again.

Swap the orange

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

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

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