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Dessert

Orange Cake

A moist orange-flavored cake made with flour, sugar, eggs, orange zest, juice, and baking soda.

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

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Orange Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

  3. In another bowl, beat the yolks and add the cooled water, orange rind, and juice.

  4. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until smooth.

Fold and bake

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gently fold the egg whites into the batter.

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

Make the icing

  1. For icing, beat 2 egg whites to stiff peaks, then gradually add sugar and mix in orange rind and juice.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 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. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Flour and egg 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 that lifts the batter, while yolks add richness and structure.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the cake its main structure as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it tender and moist, and it stabilises the icing.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the egg whites so they whip more stably and hold their volume.
Orange juice and rind
Add acidity and aroma, and the juice adds moisture to the batter.

The step that matters

Folding the egg whites into the batter. Whipped egg whites hold the air that makes the cake light. Stirring them in vigorously deflates the foam, so fold gently with a spatula until just combined.

Swap the orange

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

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

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