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Dessert

Orange Case

A sweet cake with orange zest and a meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Orange Case

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.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. Sift together the flour, corn starch, baking powder, lemon extract, and vanilla extract.

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

  4. Add the milk and half of the flour mixture to the creamed butter and sugar. Stir the mixture well.

  5. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

  6. Add the remaining flour mixture.

Bake the cake

  1. Pour the batter into jelly tins.

  2. Bake until golden.

Make and spread the orange topping

  1. Beat the egg whites for the jelly until stiff. Gradually add the powdered sugar.

  2. Fold in the juice and grated pulp of the oranges.

  3. Spread the orange jelly on top of the baked cake, creating a high meringue appearance.

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. Vanilla + milktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the cake crumb as it sets in the oven.
Corn starch
Softens the crumb to a tender texture by diluting the gluten from the flour.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and become light.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and add richness and a tender crumb.
Egg whites
Beaten and folded in to add lift and a light, airy structure.
Oranges
Juice and pulp add citrus acidity and aroma to the jelly topping.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air only when beaten to stiff peaks and folded gently. Overmixing or deflating them loses the air that makes the cake rise light.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, corn, vanilla, butter, sugar, milk, 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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