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Dessert

Okange Cake, with Icing

A cake made with sugar, butter, eggs, milk, flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and iced with powdered sugar, orange zest, orange juice, lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Okange Cake, with Icing

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. Beat the 4 eggs thoroughly.

  3. Rub the cream of tartar into the flour.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in a little of the milk.

  5. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  6. Add the eggs, flour, and milk to the butter mixture and mix well.

Bake and ice

  1. Pour the batter into Washington pie plates.

  2. Bake until golden.

  3. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks.

  4. Gradually add the powdered sugar, orange zest, orange juice, and lemon juice, mixing until smooth.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as the cake sets.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter and helps the baking soda react and lift the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that makes the cake rise.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they give the icing a light, airy texture.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda fully before mixing. Baking soda must be evenly dispersed in the liquid so it reacts with the acid in the batter. Clumps leave pockets of bitter residue and uneven rising.

Swap the orange

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

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

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