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Dessert

Orange Sandwich

A cake with orange rind, orange juice filling, and almond garnish.

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 Sandwich

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the cake

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

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Add the beaten eggs and grated orange rind.

  4. Sift the baking soda, cream of tartar, and flour together.

  5. Stir in the sifted ingredients lightly with the milk.

  6. Spread the mixture in a flat tin and bake for 30-40 minutes.

  7. Once cooled, split the cake open.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, mix cornflour with lemon juice, then add boiling orange juice and sugar to taste.

  2. Stir and boil for five minutes, then let it cool.

Assemble and garnish

  1. Spread the filling on the cake and cover with water icing if desired.

  2. Blanch and slice almonds finely, and chop raisins if using.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Forms the cake's structure once baked.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour when creamed with sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown while creaming aerates the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with cream of tartar to produce gas that makes the cake rise.
Cornflour
Thickens the orange filling as it boils.

The step that matters

Stir in the sifted ingredients lightly with the milk. Overmixing once flour meets liquid develops gluten, which makes the cake tough. Stirring gently keeps the crumb tender and preserves the rising gas from the baking soda and cream of tartar.

Swap the orange

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

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

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