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Dessert

Orange Cake

A layered cake made with sugar, butter, egg yolks, milk, lemon juice, flour, baking powder, egg whites, oranges, and a frosting of egg whites.

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

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Orange Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA medium oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a medium oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the sugar and butter together until smooth.

  2. Add the egg yolks and mix well.

  3. Stir in the milk and lemon juice.

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

  5. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) until done.

  2. Once cooled, chop the oranges, sweeten, and spread over three layers.

  3. Cover with frosting and stack the layers, adding frosting to the sides and top.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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
Adds fat that makes the crumb tender and rich, and helps carry flavour.
Egg yolks
Add richness and moisture and help bind the batter.
Egg whites
Beaten and folded in to trap air, giving the cake lift and a light texture.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, making the cake rise.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a soft, tender crumb.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air only while they are whipped. Folding them in gently keeps that air in the batter, so the cake rises light instead of dense.

Swap the orange

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

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

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