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Dessert

Orange Cake

A light cake made with orange and lemon juice, powdered sugar, and egg whites, finished with a citrus frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Orange Cake

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 ↓

Orange Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cake

  1. Make a white cupcake and bake in layers.

Make the filling

  1. Once cold, prepare the filling by beating the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Whip in the powdered sugar, then add the lemon juice and orange juice.

  3. Strain out the grated orange peel and mix it in.

  4. Reserve a little filling and whip in more powdered sugar to make frosting for the top layer.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam, they give the filling its light, airy structure.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the filling and, whipped in, stabilises it and thickens it into frosting.
Lemon juice
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the sweet filling.
Orange juice
Adds fruity sweetness and acidity, adding moisture and citrus aroma to the filling.
Orange peel
Supplies fragrant citrus oils that add aroma to the filling.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be beaten until they hold firm peaks; under-whipped whites stay runny and deflate, while over-whipped whites turn grainy and dry. Cooling the cake first keeps the foam from melting or collapsing when the filling is spread.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Orangethe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, 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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