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Dessert

Delicious Orange Cake

A moist cake flavored with orange juice and rind, with an orange filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Delicious Orange Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the sugar and butter until smooth.

  2. Beat the eggs separately and add them to the mixture.

  3. Squeeze the juice of 2 large oranges into a cup and add enough water to fill it.

  4. Stir the orange juice mixture into the batter.

  5. Add the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and grated orange rind, mixing well.

Bake and fill

  1. Pour the batter into layer cake pans and bake until golden.

  2. For the filling, beat 1 egg and mix in grated orange rind and juice of 1/2 orange.

  3. Add sugar to the filling until it thickens.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to add richness and a tender crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness to the batter as it sets in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as it bakes.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter and works with baking soda to lift the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps tenderize the crumb while creaming with butter.

The step that matters

Add sugar to the filling until it thickens. Sugar thickens the egg and juice mixture as it heats and sets. Adding it gradually and watching the texture keeps the filling smooth rather than overcooked or grainy.

Swap the orange

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

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

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