Orange olive oil cake is a decadent, delightful dessert. But like many foods, recipes have been adapted and interpreted in many ways. Much like scripture.
When you stand facing the wall of bookcases lining the hallway to our bedroom, on the left, you’ll see my cookbook collection—two floor-to-ceiling rows of built-in shelving. To the right, you’ll see Naomi’s volumes of Judaica.
To the left: Simple French Food, The Classic Cuisine of the Italian Jews, and My Life in Recipes. To the right: Yiddish and Hebrew literature, poetry, mysticism, Midrash, Talmud, prayer books, Jewish philosophy and history — as well as the books she wrote.
Naomi has read a recipe or two in her life, and I’ve studied Jewish texts. But generally, in our house, the cookbooks are mine, the deep well of Judaica hers.
Interpretation On Top of Interpretation
But this week, as I worked my way through recipes for Dario Cecchini’s orange olive oil cake, I realized that the very different things we love and study aren’t so different after all.
Jewish wisdom is a conversation across time. Sometimes, in a sermon, Naomi will say, “The rabbis said…” and I have to remind myself she could be talking about rabbis who spoke 2000 years ago — or last week. It’s all alive, it all speaks to her now.
Take the Talmud — also on our shelves — a record of oral legal and religious discussions spanning centuries, compiled around 500 CE. It’s interpretation upon interpretation, story layered over story — a palimpsest of past and present, forming the foundation of Jewish law and custom.
In other words, Jewish law, philosophy, literature, and mysticism are a lot like a recipe collection: the work of generations refining, adapting, translating, and preserving ideas for the next generation to build upon.
From Torah to Cheeseburgers
Here’s a good example—and stick with me, because Dario’s orange olive oil cake is worth it.
The Torah repeats three times: “Do not seethe the kid in its mother’s milk.” At first glance, it seems like a simple ethical prohibition (and as a former goat owner, I deeply approve).
But by the time of the Talmud, the rabbis expanded on this simple commandment exponentially. Centuries of scholars and mystics have built upon it, delved into it, pulled it apart, and added on to it. From it they’ve fashioned rules, about not cooking any milk together with any meat, separating meat and milk dishes, waiting hours between even eating meat and milk, so they don’t mix in your stomach. This cascade of debate—now shorthand for jokes about cheeseburgers—remains ongoing, including a contemporary argument whether cheese can be eaten with lab-grown meat.
And even if you don’t adhere to the rules, there are layers of profound commentary on the idea itself: the profanity of mixing meat, which is death, with milk, which is life.
To engage with the wealth of literature and commentary on these ideas, Naomi told me, “means that when you eat, you know who you are, and you’re connected to life and death with every bite you take.”
How a Recipe Evolves
Recipes connect us, too. Just like rabbis build on past teachings, chefs and cookbook authors interpret, refine, and reinvent what came before. Culture, chemistry, time, and technology all play their part.
So, Cecchini, the legendary Tuscan butcher behind Antica Macelleria Cecchini. created or learned the recipe for this cake, which he served to my late friend Judy Zeidler, the cookbook author he called his second mother, and to Nancy Silverton, chef, baker, restaurateur, author, and, not least of all, creator of Nancy’s Fancy, pretty wonderful gelato.
“After a seven-course fixed menu of meat dishes, Dario brings out this cake, cut into squares and stacked high on a plate,” Silverton wrote in her cookbook Mozza at Home. “He explains that it’s a rare dessert with no dairy—a nod to those who don’t mix meat with milk.”
We are among those who don’t serve dairy desserts after meat meals, and I’m always looking for what I call naturally pareve desserts, that is, desserts that don’t substitute non-dairy ingredients for dairy, but were just born that way. Silverton’s description of a bright but rich cake that uses olive oil as shortening grabbed me.
Then, Ruth Reichl, former Gourmet editor, in her newsletter La Briffe, shared her own trial-and-error journey adapting Silverton’s version of Dario’s cake for American kitchens. Some attempts were “dense and damp,” she wrote. “One even looked awful.”
But the final version? Nearly perfect.
So Ruth interpreted Nancy, who interpreted Dario, who got the original from, well, like the laws of Torah themselves, who knows? These things come down to us as an unbroken but mysterious chain.
The second greatest mistake we make is to ignore what has come before us. But the greatest mistake we make is to think the way they are is the way they have to be, or the way they will always be.
So I read the different versions of Dario’s orange olive oil cake — Judy, Nancy, Ruth, Dario — then came up with an ever-so-slightly tweaked version of my own.
My Orange Olive Oil Cake Adaptation
When I made the cake for Shabbat, I swapped the pine nuts for shelled pistachios—one of my guests had a severe pine nut allergy. As it turns out, pistachios add not just a pop of color but a richer, more distinctive flavor. Instead of an angel cake pan, I used a simple springform pan. And I reduced the sugar by two tablespoons.
A couple of tips if you make it:
Use Italian leavening. It’s worth ordering online. I used it later for cantucci di Prato, and it was magic.
Get the best oranges you can. I picked mine straight from my tree. If you need one, let me know.
A Slice of Wisdom
Yes, this is a lot of commentary for a slice of cake. But my side of the bookshelf is just as layered, rich, and intricate as Naomi’s.
As Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, the great Talmud scholar, once wrote: “After one begins to study, and the more one learns, the world does not become simpler and smoother. On the contrary, in a certain sense it becomes more and more complicated, more and more complex.”
Fortunately, there’s cake.
Dario Cecchini’s orange olive oil cake
Ingredients
- ½ cup golden raisins
- 1/4 cup rum
- 1 1/2 navel oranges finely chopped (pulp and peel)
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 cup sugar (+ 2 tablespoons)
- ½ cup extra virgin olive oil
- 1 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
- 2 tsp Italian leavening powder
- 1/3 cup shelled pistachio nuts
- Powdered sugar for garnish
Instructions
- Bring the raisins and rum to a simmer in a very small saucepan over high heat. Turn off the heat and set aside for the raisins to absorb the rum for at least 30 minutes or up to overnight.
- Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and preheat the oven to 400°F.
- Spray a 10-inch springform pan generously with nonstick cooking spray and dust it lightly with flour.
- Leaving the peels attached, finely chop the oranges, remove any seeds and set aside.
- In a mixer with a whisk attachment, beat the eggs, Italian leavening, and ½ cup plus 2 tablespoons of the granulated sugar until the mixture thickens, 3 to 4 minutes. Gradually add the olive oil. Reduce the mixer speed to low. Slowly add the flour and raisins, mixing until they are well incorporated.
- Turn off the mixer. Remove the bowl from the stand. Fold the chopped oranges into the batter. Let it rest for 10 minutes, then turn into the prepared pan and sprinkle the pistachios over the top.
- Bake the cake for 10 minutes. Rotate the cake and lower the oven temperature to 325°F. Bake the cake for another 30 to 35 minutes, until the cake is golden brown and a toothpick inserted comes out clean, rotating the cake once during the baking time so it browns evenly. Remove the cake from the oven and set it aside to cool to room temperature.
- To serve, run a knife around the inside of the pan before opening it. Dust with powdered sugar.
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