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Dessert

Orange Cake

A moist orange cake with orange filling and lemon icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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 batter

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix eggs, sugar, melted butter, milk, pastry flour, baking powder, orange juice, and grated orange rind in the order given.

  3. Pour batter into prepared cake pans.

  4. Bake until golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, combine juice of 1 orange and lemon juice in a cup, add water to make ½ cup, and add 1 teaspoon grated orange rind.

  2. In a saucepan, bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Add 1 tablespoon corn starch mixed with water until thick.

  4. Beat the yolk of 1 egg with 1 heaping tablespoon sugar and blend into the hot starch mixture.

  5. Add 1 teaspoon butter or cream.

  6. Strain the filling and let it cool.

Assemble and ice

  1. Spread the filling between the layers of cake.

  2. For the icing, beat the egg white, lemon juice, and powdered sugar until thick and creamy.

  3. Spread the icing on the cake while it is still warm.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Orange + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together586 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  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
Provide structure and richness as they set during baking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the cake a tender crumb.
Pastry flour
Forms the cake's structure once the batter sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises.
Corn starch
Thickens the filling as it heats, giving it a spreadable body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer texture in the cake.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk to the hot starch mixture. If the yolk is added too quickly or without blending, it can scramble into lumps. Mixing it in steadily with the hot starch lets the yolk thicken smoothly into the filling.

Swap the orange

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

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

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