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Dessert

Orange Meringue Cake

A layered cake soaked in wine or custard, topped with orange filling and meringue, baked until lightly browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,046 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Orange Meringue Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the cake

  1. Soak the slice of cake with wine, milk, or custard.

  2. Place it on a second slice of unsoaked cake on a baking tin.

Make the filling and meringue

  1. Spread the orange mixture on top, piling it slightly in the center.

  2. Beat the yolks of the eggs with the orange mixture for the filling.

  3. Whip the egg whites with sugar and essence of orange or grated rind for the meringue.

  4. Spread the meringue on top of the cake.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F/175°C) for about 10 minutes until the top is light brown.

  2. Serve cold, optionally with cream or custard.

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. Wine + orangetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,046 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Orange + eggtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Wine + sugartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the orange filling and whites whip into the meringue that sets on top.
Sugar
Sweetens the meringue and helps the whipped whites hold their shape.
Orange mixture
Provides the orange flavour and the moist, set filling layer.
Cake slice
Forms the base layer, which the soaking liquid moistens.

The step that matters

Spread and bake the meringue. Whipped egg whites can deflate if overbeaten or left to sit, and the meringue needs to be spread evenly and baked briefly until lightly browned so it sets without drying or weeping.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, egg, sugar. 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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