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Orange Flip Cake

A sponge cake filled with a sweet orange custard and topped with orange carpels.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Orange Flip Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cake

  1. Bake a sponge cake flavored with orange in a round loaf.

  2. Let the cake cool.

  3. Cut out the center, leaving the bottom and sides 1.5 inches thick.

Make the glaze

  1. Boil 1 cup sugar and ½ cup water in a saucepan until it reaches the soft ball stage.

  2. Set the syrup aside until partly cooled.

  3. Stir the syrup until thick and creamy.

  4. Mix in the grated rind of 1 orange, 1 teaspoon orange extract, and a little yellow color paste.

  5. Heat this mixture over hot water until soft and creamy.

  6. Coat the sides and top of the cake with the mixture.

Make the filling

  1. Combine the strained juice of 1 lemon, juice of 2 oranges, grated rind of 1 orange, 1 cup sugar, 4 whole eggs, 4 egg yolks, 1 cup white wine, and ½ cup water mixed with 2 scant teaspoons corn starch in another saucepan.

  2. Stir over hot water, whisking continuously until thickened.

  3. Fold in the whipped whites of 3 eggs.

  4. Beat the mixture for 2 more minutes over the fire.

  5. Let the mixture sit for 5–10 minutes.

  6. Fill the prepared cake with the mixture, shaping it to a point.

  7. Once cold, decorate with orange carpels dipped in melted fondant.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Orange + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together586 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Orange + white winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together730 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whole eggs and yolks thicken the filling as they set and add richness.
Corn starch
Thickens the citrus filling so it holds its shape when cooled.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup glaze and the citrus filling, and helps the glaze set smooth.
Egg whites
Whipped whites lighten the filling and add airy texture.

The step that matters

Stir the filling over hot water until thickened, then fold in the whites. Eggs and starch thicken only gradually over gentle heat; overheating can scramble the eggs, and whites folded into a hot mixture deflate and lose their lightness.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon, egg, white wine, corn):

  1. Orangethe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, egg, white wine, corn. 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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