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Dessert

Orange Cake

A moist orange cake topped with a sweet orange icing and orange slices.

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

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 cake

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

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Beat the eggs for 10 minutes, then add to the butter mixture.

  4. Stir in the sweet milk.

  5. Sift together the flour and baking powder, then gradually add to the mixture.

  6. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake until golden.

Make the icing and finish

  1. For the icing, cook 2 cups of sugar with enough water until it drops like candy.

  2. Pour the hot icing over the well-beaten egg whites and mix until smooth.

  3. Once the icing cools, decorate the cake with slices of oranges.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavor.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and their beaten foam helps the cake rise and set.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once mixed with the liquid and set by baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes airy.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender crumb when creamed with butter.
Egg whites
Whipped into the hot icing to create a light, fluffy, marshmallow-like topping.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot icing over the egg whites. The sugar syrup must be hot enough to cook the egg whites as it is poured while mixing constantly. Pouring too slowly or without beating can leave lumps or a runny, uneven icing.

Swap the orange

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

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

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