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Dessert

Orange Cake

A moist cake flavored with orange rind and juice, layered with a sweet orange filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

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 batter

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

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the sweet milk and mix well.

  4. Sift the flour with the baking powder and gradually add to the mixture.

  5. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks and then add them to the batter.

  6. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form and fold them into the batter.

  7. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake until golden brown.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, combine the grated orange rind, orange juice, water, sugar, beaten egg, and corn-starch in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring until thickened.

Assemble

  1. Spread the filling between the layers of the cooled 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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Orange + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together586 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whipped whites add lift and a light structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Flour
Its proteins set during baking, forming the cake's structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the cake rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps create a tender texture.
Corn-starch
Thickens the orange filling as it heats, giving it a spreadable body.

The step that matters

Cook the filling until thickened. Cornstarch only thickens once the mixture reaches a boil and is stirred, so stopping early leaves a runny filling that will soak into the cooled layers.

Swap the orange

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

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

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