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Dessert

Cake, Orange

A light orange cake with citrus icing and optional tangerine garnish.

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

Cake, Orange

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 sponge

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

  2. Beat the egg yolks and egg whites with the caster sugar until thick.

  3. Add the juice and grated rind of the oranges to the mixture.

  4. Sift the baking powder and flour together.

  5. Gently fold the sifted mixture into the batter.

  6. Pour the batter into two round flat cake tins.

  7. Bake for about 20 minutes.

  8. Let the cakes cool.

Ice and decorate

  1. Mix icing sugar with the strained juice of an orange and lemon juice.

  2. Spread icing on one cake.

  3. Place the second cake on top.

  4. Cover with remaining icing.

  5. Remove pith and pips from tangerine oranges.

  6. Dip them in boiled sugar.

  7. Arrange around the 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.

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. Orange + tangerinetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Whipped with sugar to trap air, giving the cake its light, airy structure.
Caster sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the whipped eggs hold their foam.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes tender.
Fine dried flour
Forms the cake's structure once heated, setting the crumb around the air bubbles.
Oranges
Provide juice and rind for citrus aroma, flavour and moisture in the sponge.
Icing sugar
Combines with citrus juice to make a sweet, smooth glaze for the filling and top.

The step that matters

Gently fold the sifted mixture into the batter. Folding keeps the air whipped into the eggs. Stirring vigorously knocks out bubbles, so the cake rises less and turns dense.

Swap the orange

The recipe marks orange as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, flour, lemon, tangerine):

  1. Orangethe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, lemon, tangerine. 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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