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Dessert

Orange Cake

A sweet cake made with orange juice, zest, and a fluffy batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Orange Cake

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. 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 batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the water and egg yolks, mixing well.

  4. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

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

  6. Stir in the juice of one orange.

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

  8. Fold the beaten egg whites into the batter gently.

Bake and fill

  1. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake until golden.

  2. For the filling, mix the juice and grated rind of one orange with the beaten egg whites and sugar.

  3. Spread the filling between the layers of the cooled 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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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

Eggs
Egg yolks enrich the batter and whipped whites add lift and a light, airy crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavor to the batter.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it moist and tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter and stabilizes the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Fold the beaten egg whites into the batter gently. Whipped egg whites hold air that gives the cake its lift. Vigorous stirring knocks that air out, leaving a denser cake.

Swap the orange

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

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

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