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Dessert

Orange Cakes

A sweet baked cake flavored with orange rind and juice, topped with a boiled sugar and vinegar icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Orange Cakes

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 cake

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks and mix well.

  3. Stir in the milk, baking powder, and flour.

  4. Add the orange rind and juice, and mix until combined.

  5. Pour the batter into Gem pans and bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

Make the icing

  1. For the icing, pour boiling water over 1 cup of sugar and stir until dissolved.

  2. Boil the mixture and add vinegar.

  3. When it becomes gummy, pour it over the beaten egg whites mixed with cream of tartar.

  4. Beat until stiff and creamy.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 and give the cake a tender crumb.
Egg yolks
Add richness, moisture and structure to the batter.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure of the cake batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam that gives the icing its light, airy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, dissolved in boiling water, forms the icing.

The step that matters

Adding the hot sugar syrup to the egg whites. The syrup must be boiled to the right gummy stage and poured in a thin stream while beating. This cooks and stabilises the whites into a glossy, stiff foam; if the syrup is too cool or too thick, the icing stays loose or grainy.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, milk, flour, vinegar, 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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