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Dessert

Orange Cake

A sweet cake with orange flavor, layered with orange frosting.

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

Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. 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. In a bowl, mix 2 cups sugar, 5 egg yolks, ½ cup cold water, 2½ cups flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, the juice and grated rind of 1 orange, and a pinch of salt.

  3. Beat the mixture until smooth and pour it into jelly cake tins.

Make the frosting

  1. In another bowl, beat 3 egg whites to a stiff froth.

  2. Gradually add 7 tablespoons powdered sugar, along with the grated rind and juice of 1 orange.

Assemble

  1. Spread the frosting between the layers of the cake once baked.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Flour + orangetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,821 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Egg yolks
Add richness, moisture and tenderness to the cake crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped to a foam, they lighten the batter and give the frosting its body.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake's crumb together.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the cake to rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it soft and moist.
Orange
Adds bright citrus aroma and acidity to both cake and frosting.

The step that matters

Adding sugar to the beaten egg whites. Adding powdered sugar gradually to stiff egg whites stabilises the foam, keeping it glossy and spreadable. Adding it all at once can collapse the foam and leave the frosting runny.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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