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Dessert

Orange-flower Cakes

A sweet cake made from orange flower leaves and sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Orange-flower Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the leaves

  1. Soak the orange flower leaves in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Drain the leaves and place them between napkins.

  3. Roll the leaves with a rolling pin until bruised.

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the sugar with enough water to make a thick syrup.

  2. Simmer until the syrup adheres to the sides of the pan.

Form and dry the cakes

  1. Drop small cakes onto a plate.

  2. Dry the cakes as directed.

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 + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Orange and sugar 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

What each ingredient does

Orange flower leaves
Provide the characteristic orange-blossom aroma that flavours the cakes.
Sugar
Forms the thick syrup that binds the cakes and gives them sweetness.

The step that matters

Simmer until the syrup adheres to the sides of the pan. Sugar syrup thickens as water evaporates and its concentration rises. Stop too early and the cakes stay soft and sticky; cook too long and the syrup hardens and crystallises. The syrup should be thick enough to hold its shape when dropped.

“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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