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Dessert

Orange and Lemon Cake

A moist cake flavored with orange and lemon, topped with a frosted filling of beaten egg whites and citrus.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 and Lemon 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.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and melted butter.

  3. Add the egg yolks and mix well.

  4. Stir in the milk, cream of tartar, baking soda, flour, and the juice and rind of the orange.

Bake and finish

  1. Divide the batter into layers and bake until golden.

  2. For the filling, beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add sugar until thick.

  3. Fold in the juice and rind of the lemon for frosting.

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. Orange + lemontop 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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

Egg yolks
Add richness and moisture, and help bind the batter.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks to lighten the filling and add structure.
Flour
Provides the main structure of the cake as it sets in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that helps it rise.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the whipped egg whites and adds acidity to the batter.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be whipped to stiff peaks without deflating; under-whipped or greasy whites will not lighten the filling, and folding too vigorously knocks out the air that gives it volume.

Swap the orange

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

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

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