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Dessert

Orange Butter

A cake made from butter, sugar, egg yolk, orange juice, almonds, and orange rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,125 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Orange Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Pound the hard-boiled yolk in a bowl.

  2. Add the butter, caster sugar, ground almonds, and grated orange rind.

  3. Stir in the thick cream and enough orange juice to moisten the mixture.

Finish and serve

  1. Reassemble the cake and dust the top with caster sugar.

  2. Cut into diamond-shaped pieces.

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 + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and a tender, moist crumb to the mixture.
Hard-boiled egg yolk
Gives the mixture a dense, rich, crumbly texture.
Ground almonds
Adds body, nutty flavour and a moist, tender texture.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the cake and adds a fine, delicate crust on top.
Orange juice
Moistens the mixture and adds citrus acidity and flavour.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream and orange juice gradually. Adding too much liquid at once can make the mixture wet and slack, so it will not hold its shape. Add just enough juice to moisten the mixture so it binds and can be reassembled and cut cleanly.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, almond, cream. 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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