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Dessert

Orange Cream Cake

A light cake flavored with orange zest and juice, topped with a sweet orange cream filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Orange Cream 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the cake

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

  2. In a bowl, mix flour and baking powder.

  3. In another bowl, beat egg yolks and sugar until creamy.

  4. Add water, orange juice, and grated orange rind to the yolk mixture.

  5. Gradually add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients.

  6. In a separate bowl, beat egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  7. Fold the beaten egg whites into the batter gently.

  8. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 30-35 minutes.

Make the filling and finish

  1. For the filling, beat 1 egg white to stiff froth, then gradually add powdered sugar until stiff.

  2. Mix in the juice and grated rind of 1 orange.

  3. Once the cake is cool, spread the orange cream filling 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.

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
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Egg yolks
Add richness and moisture, and help bind the batter.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air that lightens the batter and helps it rise.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, causing the cake to rise and become light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it tender and moist.
Orange juice
Adds moisture and bright citrus acidity and flavour to the batter.

The step that matters

Fold the beaten egg whites into the batter gently. Stiff whipped whites hold air that makes the cake light. Vigorous stirring knocks that air out, so the cake bakes up dense instead of airy.

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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