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Dessert

Newport Orange and Lemon Cake

A moist cake flavored with orange and lemon, layered with a sweet filling and finished with an egg white icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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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 ↓

Newport Orange and Lemon 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. Cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the milk and mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder.

  5. Gradually add the flour mixture to the creamed mixture, mixing until smooth.

  6. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then add the lemon juice and grated rind.

  7. Pour the batter into jelly cake tins and bake until golden.

Make the filling and icing

  1. For the filling, beat the egg whites until stiff, then mix in the granulated sugar, orange rind, juice, and pulp, and lemon juice.

  2. For the icing, beat the egg whites until stiff, then mix in the powdered sugar, orange rind, juice, and lemon juice.

Assemble

  1. Spread the filling between the layers of cooled cake.

  2. Spread the icing between each layer when cool.

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. 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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake's shape as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help bind the batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay moist.
Egg whites
Beaten until stiff to give the filling and icing a light, airy structure.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff for the filling and icing. Egg whites must be beaten to stiff peaks to trap air that gives the filling and icing lightness. Under-beaten whites stay runny and collapse, while over-beaten whites turn dry and grainy.

Swap the orange

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

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

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