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Dessert

Orange Cake

A sweet cake with orange filling made from sugar, butter, eggs, flour, milk, baking powder, orange juice, pulp, rind, cornstarch, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Orange Cake

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 Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the cake

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

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter, then add the egg whites and mix well.

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

  4. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake until golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, combine sugar, butter, and beaten eggs in a saucepan.

  2. Add the orange juice, pulp, rind, cornstarch, and boiling water.

  3. Cook over medium heat until the mixture thickens.

Assemble

  1. Spread the filling between the layers of 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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
Creams with sugar to give the cake a tender, rich crumb and flavor.
Egg whites
Add structure and help the batter set as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, making the cake rise and become light.
Cornstarch
Thickens the orange filling as it cooks.
Eggs
Thicken the filling as they cook, giving it a custard-like set.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling until it thickens. Cornstarch and egg thicken only when heated enough, but overheating can curdle the eggs or leave the starch under-set. Cook gently over medium heat, stirring, and stop once the mixture thickens so it spreads smoothly and sets properly as it cools.

Swap the orange

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

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

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