Skip to main content
Main

Orange Layer Cake

A moist orange‑flavored cake layered with orange filling and confectioner's sugar icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Layer 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 batter

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

  2. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the egg yolks one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Stir in the milk and mix until combined.

  5. In another bowl, sift together the flour and baking powder.

  6. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing until smooth.

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

  8. Gently fold the egg whites into the batter.

Bake and fill

  1. Pour the batter into greased cake pans and bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. For the filling, mix the orange juice, grated rind, egg white, and confectioner's sugar until smooth.

  3. Once the cakes are cool, layer them with the orange filling and pour any remaining icing 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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
Whites whipped to stiff peaks trap air, lifting the cake and giving it a light crumb.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds fat for a tender, rich texture.
All-purpose flour
Its proteins set into the cake's structure as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cakes rise.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps hold air when creamed with butter.
Confectioner's sugar
Dissolves into the orange filling to make it sweet and spreadable.

The step that matters

Folding the egg whites into the batter. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the whites. Stirring or deflating them makes the cake dense and flat instead of light.

Swap the orange

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

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

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

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes