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Dessert

Orange Cake

A layered orange cake with a frosting made from egg whites, sugar, and lemon peel.

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

Why it works: Lemon and orange 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA medium oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a medium oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Sift the sugar and flour three times separately.

  2. Mix the sifted sugar and flour together.

  3. Stir in the well-beaten egg whites.

  4. Add cream of tartar with the sugar and flour before adding the eggs.

  5. In a separate bowl, cream the sugar and butter until smooth.

  6. Add the egg yolks, milk, and lemon juice, and mix well.

  7. Sift in the flour with baking powder and mix until smooth.

  8. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Bake

  1. Divide the batter into four layers.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C).

Fill and frost

  1. Once cooled, chop the oranges finely and sweeten them to taste.

  2. Spread the chopped oranges over three of the layers.

  3. Prepare a soft-boiled frosting with egg whites, sweeten it to taste, and add grated lemon peel.

  4. Stack the layers and add frosting between 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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Egg whites
Trapped air in the beaten whites lifts the batter and gives the cake its light structure.
All-purpose flour
Its proteins set during baking to form the cake's main structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, causing the batter to rise in the oven.
Butter
Fat coats flour particles and tenderizes the crumb, adding richness.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the crumb tender and moist.
Milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flour and gives a softer crumb.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. The whites hold air bubbles that lift the batter as it bakes. Overmixing deflates that foam, leaving a denser cake.

Swap the orange

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

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

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