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Dessert

French Cake

A light, airy cake made with eggs, butter, flour, sugar, lemon, and orange, finished with a powdered sugar icing.

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

French 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.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, beat the yolks of 10 eggs until very light. Add ½ pound of granulated sugar, 1 tablespoon of water, and the juice of 1 lemon.

  3. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Gently fold the beaten egg whites into the yolk mixture.

  4. Sift 1 pound of flour and 2 teaspoons of cream of tartar together, then sift again into the egg mixture. Mix all ingredients together and pour into three greased cake pans.

Bake and ice

  1. Bake until golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. For the icing, beat 2 egg whites until stiff, then gradually add 1 pound of powdered sugar. Grate the rind of 1 orange and add the juice and rind to the icing. Spread icing between the layers 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Whipped whites give the cake its airy structure, and the yolks add richness and color.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the sponge once the eggs set in the oven.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps stabilize the beaten egg foam.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the whipped egg whites so they hold their volume during baking.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves into the egg whites to make a smooth, sweet icing.

The step that matters

Folding the beaten egg whites into the yolk mixture. Egg whites hold air only when whipped stiff and handled gently. Vigorous stirring knocks out the air, which leaves a dense, flat cake.

Swap the orange

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

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

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

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