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Dessert

Iced Orange Cake

A moist cake flavored with orange peel and vanilla, finished with marmalade, maraschino, and pistachio glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pistachio and nuts match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 425 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Iced Orange Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA very moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the batter

  1. In a saucepan, combine eggs, vanilla essence, powdered sugar, orange peel, and liquid carmine.

  2. Whip the mixture over boiling water until warm, then remove from heat and continue whipping until cold and thick.

  3. Gently mix in the fine flour using a wooden spoon.

Prepare the mold

  1. Brush a Charlotte mold with warm butter, line it with paper, butter the paper, and dust with flour and sugar.

Bake and assemble

  1. Pour the cake mixture into the mold and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  2. Turn the cake out onto a rack and let it cool completely.

  3. Slice the cake and spread each slice with sieved orange marmalade, then reassemble the slices.

Glaze and serve

  1. Glaze the cake with maraschino and orange glace.

  2. Before the glaze sets, sprinkle with finely shredded pistachio nuts.

  3. Serve as a dessert or with fruit.

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. Pistachio + nutstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Vanilla + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,371 recipes

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

  3. Flour + pistachiotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together505 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vanilla + pistachiotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together407 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Vanilla + nutstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together638 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped to trap air, giving the cake its light, airy structure.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps stabilise the whipped foam.
Fine flour
Provides the starch that sets the cake's crumb once baked.
Orange marmalade
Adds fruity sweetness and moisture between the reassembled slices.
Orange peel
Contributes concentrated orange aroma and flavour to the batter.

The step that matters

Whip until cold and thick, then fold in the flour gently. The cake's rise depends on air trapped in the whipped eggs and sugar. Heavy stirring during the flour addition knocks that air out, producing a dense rather than light cake.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, vanilla, sugar, flour, butter, pistachio, nuts. 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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