Skip to main content
Dessert

Orange Cake

A layered orange cake with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, lemon and orange zest, topped with orange icing.

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

Why it works: Lemon and orange 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 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 the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the egg yolks, lemon rind, and juice, 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. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  7. Gently fold the egg whites into the batter.

Bake and ice

  1. Divide the batter into four layers and bake until golden.

  2. Let the layers cool completely.

  3. For the icing, mix the orange rind and juice with the egg whites and powdered sugar until smooth.

  4. Spread icing between each layer and on 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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the layers together as they bake.
Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and add tenderness and richness.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, fluffy texture when creamed.
Egg yolks
Add richness, moisture, and emulsifying power to the batter.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks to lighten the batter and help it rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic citrus and cream of tartar to produce gas that leavens the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped egg whites hold air that gives the cake its lift. Stirring them vigorously knocks that air out, leaving a dense cake, so fold gently until just combined.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

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

More orange cake recipes

Filling 22Almond 6Pineapple 6Seville 4 See all 343 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes