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Dessert

Orange Cake

A cake made with eggs, sugar, flour, orange zest and juice, and rose water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Orange Cake

Why it works: Orange and rose work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 876 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Orange Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Separate the egg whites from the yolks.

  2. Beat the egg whites and rose water together with a whisk for 30 minutes.

  3. Add the sugar and grated orange rind, mixing well.

  4. Incorporate the orange juice and egg yolks, beating until smooth.

  5. Sift the flour and gently fold it into the mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a deep pan and bake for about 1 hour at 300°F (150°C).

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 + rosetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together876 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Whipped whites trap air and give the cake its light, airy structure while yolks add richness.
Pulverized sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps stabilize the beaten egg whites.
Orange
Zest and juice add citrus aroma, flavor and moisture to the batter.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten that set the cake's crumb once baked.

The step that matters

Folding in the flour. Flour must be folded in gently so the air whipped into the egg whites is not knocked out, which would leave the cake dense and flat.

Swap the orange

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

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

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