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Dessert

Orange Cake

A layered orange cake with orange filling and orange icing, made with eggs, flour, butter, sugar, milk, baking powder, and whiskey.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 2 cups of sugar together.

  3. Add the yolks of 5 eggs and the beaten whites of 5 eggs to the mixture.

  4. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and whiskey.

  5. Bake in layers until golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, combine the juice of 4 oranges, 1 tablespoon butter, yolks of 2 eggs, 1 ½ cups sugar, and 1 tablespoon flour in a saucepan.

  2. Cook until thick, then spread between the layers of cake.

Make the icing

  1. For the icing, mix the juice of the remaining 2 oranges with sugar and the whipped whites of 2 eggs.

  2. Cook until thick and pour over the top of the cake.

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. 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. Egg + flourtop 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
Yolks and whites add richness, structure and lift to the cake and set the filling and icing.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour in the cake and filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake, filling and icing and helps keep the crumb moist and tender.
Oranges
Supply the juice that flavours the cake, filling and icing with acidity and aroma.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling until thick. Egg yolks thicken as they heat and set the custard, but overheating can curdle them. Cook gently and stir constantly so the filling thickens smoothly before spreading.

Swap the orange

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

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

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