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Dessert

Orange Jelly Cake

A layered cake made with orange-flavored batter and frosted with orange-flavored whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Orange Jelly 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.

Make and bake the cake

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

  2. In a bowl, combine flour, sugar, cold water, orange juice, orange peel, egg yolks, salt, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

  3. Mix until smooth and pour the batter into 4 jelly tins.

  4. Bake until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Frost and assemble

  1. For the frosting, beat the reserved egg white with powdered sugar until stiff.

  2. Grate in the peel of another orange and add its juice to the frosting.

  3. Spread the frosting between the layers of cake.

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

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

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  5. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the cake tender and moist.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and structure, while whites help the cake rise and set.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidic ingredients to release gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that works with baking soda and stabilizes the egg whites.
Orange
Its juice and peel add acidity and fresh citrus aroma to the cake and frosting.

The step that matters

Beating the reserved egg white for the frosting. Egg whites only whip to stiff peaks when free of yolk and grease. Any fat left in the bowl or whites will keep them from stiffening properly.

Swap the orange

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

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

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