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Dessert

Orange Cake

A moist cake flavored with orange zest and juice, topped with an orange-flavored frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Orange Cake

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. 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. Beat the yolks of 5 eggs well.

  3. Mix in 2 cups of sugar, ½ cup of cold water, the juice and rind of 1 orange, 1 teaspoon of baking soda, and 2 teaspoons of cream of tartar.

  4. Gradually add 2 cups of flour to the mixture.

  5. In a separate bowl, beat the whites of 3 eggs to a stiff froth and fold them into the batter.

  6. Pour the batter into two cake pans and bake until golden.

Make the frosting and assemble

  1. For the frosting, combine 2 egg whites with 3 cups of powdered sugar and the juice and rind of 2 oranges without beating the whites.

  2. Once the cake is cooled, split it and spread frosting between the layers and 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.

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

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

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 yolks
Enrich the batter with fat and emulsifiers, giving a tender, rich crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped to a stiff froth, they trap air that lifts and lightens the cake.
Flour
Forms the gluten and starch structure that sets the cake's crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it moist and tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidic partner to the baking soda that helps it react and stabilizes the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stiff egg whites hold the air that lifts the cake. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring hard deflates the batter and yields a dense cake.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, 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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