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Dessert

Orange Fruit Cake

A cake made with orange juice, orange peel, raisins, citron, sugar, butter, eggs, flour, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Orange Fruit 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the whole egg, egg yolk, and orange juice, mixing well.

  3. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and grated orange peel.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until just combined.

  5. Fold in the chopped raisins and citron.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and smooth the top.

  2. Bake for about 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  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
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender, fine crumb and rich flavor.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness as it sets in the oven.
Flour
Forms the cake's main structure once mixed and baked.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, helping the cake rise and become light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps create a light texture.
Orange juice
Adds moisture and citrus acidity that brightens the flavor.

The step that matters

Stirring the dry ingredients into the wet mixture. Stir only until just combined. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which can make the cake tough and dense.

Swap the orange

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

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

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