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Dessert

Orange Cake

A moist orange cake layered with a whipped egg white icing flavored with orange zest and juice.

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

Why it works: Sugar and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. 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 the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix 2 cups of sugar with the yolks of 5 eggs until well combined.

  3. Add the juice of 1 large orange and ½ cup of cold water to the mixture.

  4. Sift in 2 teaspoons of baking powder and mix until smooth.

  5. In a separate bowl, beat the whites of 3 eggs until stiff peaks form.

  6. Gently fold the egg whites into the batter.

Bake and ice

  1. Divide the batter into three layers and bake in the preheated oven until golden.

  2. For the icing, beat 2 egg whites until stiff, then gradually add powdered sugar to taste.

  3. Mix in the grated rind and juice of 1 orange.

  4. Spread the icing over the cooled 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. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + orangetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,696 recipes

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

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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
Yolks enrich the batter and whites, whipped to stiff peaks, give the cake its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps hold moisture and a tender crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the cake to rise and become light.
Orange juice
Adds citrus acidity and flavor and moisture to the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold the air that lifts the cake. Stirring them vigorously deflates the foam and produces a dense, flat layer, so fold gently until no white streaks remain.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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