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Baking

Orange Cake

A moist orange-flavored loaf cake with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, orange juice, rind, baking powder, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Orange Cake

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks, salt, and grated orange rind.

  4. Mix in the orange juice and sifted flour with baking powder.

  5. Fold in the stiffly whipped egg whites.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the batter into a loaf pan and bake until golden.

  2. Once cool, spread with orange frosting.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Eggs
Whipped whites and beaten yolks give the cake lift and a tender, rich structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and a soft crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sugar
Creamed with butter to aerate the batter and add sweetness and gentle browning.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise in the oven.
Orange juice
Adds moisture and bright acidity that complements the orange rind.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold the air that lifts the cake. Stirring them vigorously deflates the foam, so fold gently and just until no white streaks remain to keep the crumb light.

Swap the orange

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

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

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