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Dessert

Orange Cake

A sponge cake layered with sliced oranges and sugar, finished with a browned icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Orange Cake

Why it works: Orange and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Orange Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cake

  1. Bake a simple sponge cake in a round, deep pan.

  2. Once cold, cut the cake into four layers.

Assemble the layers

  1. Peel the oranges.

  2. Slice the peeled oranges.

  3. Place a layer of oranges on the first layer of cake.

  4. Sprinkle the oranges with sugar.

  5. Repeat with another layer of cake, oranges, and sugar until all are used.

Ice and finish

  1. Prepare a soft icing.

  2. Let the icing brown in the oven.

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. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Sponge cake
Provides the light, airy base structure for the layers.
Oranges
Add moisture and bright acidity that cut through the sweetness of the cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the oranges and draws out their juice to moisten the layers.

“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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