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Orange Cake

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Orange Cake

Why it works: Orange and saffron work together. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 185 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Orange Cake

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Sift the icing sugar through a fine sieve until smooth.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the icing sugar, orange juice, and saffron coloring.

  3. Warm the mixture gently, ensuring it does not get too hot.

  4. Pour the glaze over the cake.

  5. Sprinkle silver sweets on top and serve on lace paper.

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. Orange + saffrontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together185 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  3. Sugar + saffrontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together650 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Swap the saffron

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Saffronthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, orange. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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