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Dessert

Orange Layer Cake

A cake with orange layers and a cooked orange filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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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 Layer 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. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks and mix well.

  3. Grate the rind and scoop out the pulp and juice from the oranges, adding enough water to make 1 cup.

  4. Add the orange mixture to the butter and eggs, alternating with the sifted flour.

  5. Fold in the stiffly whipped egg whites, salt, and baking powder.

Bake the layers

  1. Divide the batter into three layers and bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, beat the egg until light and thick.

  2. Add the grated orange rind, half of the strained orange juice, and enough powdered sugar to make a thick mixture.

  3. For a cooked filling, scald the milk in a double boiler.

  4. In a bowl, beat together the sugar, cornstarch, and egg yolks until light.

  5. Stir the mixture into the hot milk and cook until thickened, about 5 minutes.

  6. Remove from heat and add the grated orange rind and juice.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 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. 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving a tender, fine-textured crumb with richness.
Egg yolks
Add richness, fat and emulsifying power that help the batter bind and stay moist.
Egg whites
Whipped to foam, they lighten the batter and help the layers rise and set.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake that holds the layers together as they bake.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the layers rise and become light.
Cornstarch
Thickens the cooked filling into a smooth, sliceable custard.

The step that matters

Stir the egg mixture into the hot milk and cook until thickened. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if added to very hot liquid too quickly. Adding the hot milk gradually and cooking gently lets the cornstarch and yolks thicken the filling smoothly.

Swap the orange

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

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

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