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Dessert

Queen Orange Cake

A sweet cake flavored with orange, baked in two layers and frosted with orange rind and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Queen Orange Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare and bake

  1. Separate the eggs, then add water to the yolks and beat until stiff.

  2. Sift the flour with the orange flavoring powder and baking soda, then fold in lightly.

  3. Bake in two layers at 400°F (200°C) for 20-25 minutes, increasing heat slightly for the last 10 minutes.

Frost and assemble

  1. For frosting, mix grated orange rind and lemon juice with enough confectioner's sugar to make a thick consistency.

  2. Layer the frosting and thin orange slices between the cake layers and on top.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour 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
Provide structure and, when beaten, air that lightens the cake.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once baked.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give a tender crumb.
Baking soda
Helps the cake rise and brown.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity and helps keep the beaten eggs stable.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright flavor to the frosting.

The step that matters

Fold the flour in lightly. The cake's lift comes from the air beaten into the eggs. Stirring vigorously or overmixing deflates that foam, which leaves the cake dense and heavy after baking.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, 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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