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Dessert

Orange Cake

A layered cake with orange-flavored batter and a sweet orange filling.

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

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 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.

Make the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the sweet milk and mix well.

  4. Gradually add the flour and baking powder, mixing until smooth.

  5. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  6. Gently fold the egg whites into the batter.

  7. Divide the batter into four jelly pans and bake until golden.

Make the filling and assemble

  1. For the filling, boil the granulated sugar and water until it forms a thread.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks until light.

  3. Gradually pour the syrup into the yolks, stirring vigorously until stiff and cold.

  4. Add the grated orange rind, lemon juice, and orange juice to the mixture.

  5. Spread the filling between the cooled cake layers and on top.

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 + 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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and gives the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they lighten the batter and help the cake rise and set.
Egg yolks
Thicken the filling into a rich, smooth custard-like texture when combined with hot syrup.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once mixed with liquids and set by heat.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the cake to rise and become light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, boiled with water, forms the syrup that thickens the filling.

The step that matters

Adding the hot syrup to the yolks. Pouring the syrup in slowly while stirring vigorously keeps the hot sugar from scrambling the yolks and lets the mixture thicken smoothly.

Swap the orange

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

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

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