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Dessert

Okange Cake

A cake made with flour, sugar, water, baking powder, eggs, and orange rind and juice, topped with an egg white and orange dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Okange 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.

Prepare and bake

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

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, sugar, water, baking powder, yolks of 5 eggs, and whites of 3 eggs until smooth.

  3. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  4. Bake until a toothpick comes out clean, about 25-30 minutes.

Make the dressing

  1. Beat the whites of 2 eggs until stiff.

  2. Grate the rind of 2 oranges.

  3. Add the juice and sugar to the egg whites to thicken.

Assemble and finish

  1. Spread the dressing between the layers of cake.

  2. Return to the oven for 1 minute.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Flour + orangetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,821 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg 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

Flour
Forms the gluten and starch framework that gives the cake its structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it moist and tender.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and structure; beaten whites trap air for lift.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it heats, making the cake rise.
Orange rind
Adds fragrant citrus oil to flavor the cake.
Orange juice
Adds acidity and citrus flavor to the dressing.

The step that matters

Beat the whites of 2 eggs until stiff.. Egg whites hold air only when whipped to the right stage. Underbeaten whites collapse and lose lift, while overbeaten whites turn dry and grainy, so the dressing may fail to thicken properly.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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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