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Dessert

Orange Cake

A moist orange-flavored cake with a sweet icing made from powdered sugar, orange and lemon juice.

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

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 ↓

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.

Make the cake batter

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

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the milk and mix well.

  3. Sift together the flour and baking powder, then gradually add to the butter mixture.

  4. Fold in the egg whites gently until combined.

Bake and make the icing

  1. Divide the batter into three or four layers and bake until golden.

  2. For the icing, beat the egg whites until stiff.

  3. Gradually add the powdered sugar, orange juice, and lemon juice and rind, mixing well.

  4. Place the icing mixture in a bowl over boiling water and stir until thickened.

  5. Let the icing cool before spreading between the cake layers.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps hold air when creamed with butter, aiding a light texture.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Eggs
Egg whites add structure and lift to the batter and help set the cake.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the batter.

The step that matters

Heating the icing over boiling water. Egg whites and sugar must be stirred gently over heat until thickened; overheating can scramble the whites or cook them too firmly, so keep the water at a simmer and stir steadily.

Swap the orange

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

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

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