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Dessert

Orange Cake

A cake made with Vienna flour, castor sugar, orange rind, baking powder, and eggs, finished with icing sugar and orange juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Orange Cake

Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Orange Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs and sugar together until smooth.

  2. Sift in the flour and baking powder, then add the grated orange rind.

  3. Mix all ingredients well together.

  4. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

Bake and ice

  1. Bake for 15 minutes.

  2. Once cooled, ice the cake with a mixture of ½ pound icing sugar and the juice of the orange.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Flour + orangetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,821 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg 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

Vienna flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the cake its structure.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set and rise as it bakes.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps give it a fine, tender crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, making the cake rise.
Orange rind
Adds citrus aroma and flavour to the cake.

The step that matters

Mix all ingredients well together. Once the flour is in, overmixing develops too much gluten, which can make the cake tough and dense. Mix only until the batter is evenly combined.

Swap the orange

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

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

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