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Dessert

Orange Cake

A cake made with flour, corn starch, baking powder, lemon and vanilla extracts, butter, sugar, milk, egg whites, powdered sugar, orange juice, and pulp.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Orange Cake

Why it works: Vanilla and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. 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.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. Sift together the flour, corn starch, baking powder, lemon extract, and vanilla extract.

  3. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  4. Add the milk and half of the flour mixture to the creamed mixture; stir well.

  5. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites and the remaining flour mixture.

Bake and top

  1. Pour the batter into jelly tins and bake until golden.

  2. For the jelly topping, beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add the powdered sugar.

  3. Fold in the orange juice and grated pulp.

  4. Spread the meringue topping over the cooled cake.

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. Vanilla + milktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Corn starch
Lightens the crumb and softens texture by diluting the flour's gluten.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness, and carries flavour through the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps trap air for a light texture.
Egg whites
Beaten and folded in to add lightness, and whipped again to form the meringue topping.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes airy.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air only when whipped and gently folded; stirring hard deflates the foam, leading to a dense, flat cake.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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