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Dessert

Orange Cake

A moist cake flavored with orange peel and juice, topped with a citrus icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Orange Cake

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 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the batter

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

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

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Stir in the milk and mix until combined.

  5. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

  6. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing until smooth.

Bake and ice

  1. Divide the batter into 4 layers and bake for 25‑30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. For the icing, beat the grated orange peel, orange juice, lemon juice, powdered sugar, and egg whites together until stiff.

  3. Spread the icing over the cooled cake layers.

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 + 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as the cake sets.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness, and creaming it with sugar traps air for a lighter crumb.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure as it sets in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that activates the baking soda and stabilizes the egg whites in the icing.
Egg whites
Whipped into the icing, they create a stiff, airy structure.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Adding flour in portions and mixing only until smooth limits gluten development, which keeps the crumb tender rather than tough and dense.

Swap the orange

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

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

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