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Dessert

Orange Cake

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Orange Cake

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Orange Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the cake

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the eggs, flour, milk, baking soda, and cream of tartar, and mix well.

  4. Divide the batter into six jelly tins.

Bake

  1. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the frosting and assemble

  1. For the frosting, whip the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually add the powdered sugar, orange juice, and grated orange peel.

  3. Spread the frosting between the layers of cake to form two loaves with three layers each.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help bind the batter.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it moist and tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to release gas that lifts the batter.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam to give the frosting its light, airy body.

The step that matters

Whipping the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites only foam well when the bowl and whisk are grease-free and no yolk is mixed in. Stop at stiff peaks, because over-whipping makes the foam grainy and dry, and it can then collapse in the frosting.

Swap the orange

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

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

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