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Dessert

Blackberry Sponge

A gelatin dessert made with blackberry juice, sugar, eggs, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Blackberry Sponge

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Soak the gelatine in ½ cup of cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. Pour the boiling water over the soaked gelatine, add the sugar, and stir until dissolved.

  3. Add the blackberry juice and strain into a tin basin.

Whip and set

  1. Place the basin in a pan of cracked ice and stir occasionally until cold and thick.

  2. Beat the mixture to a stiff froth, then fold in the well-beaten egg whites until smooth.

  3. Pour into a fancy pudding mold and let it harden.

Serve

  1. Serve with Vanilla Sauce poured around it.

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 + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Sugar + blackberrytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Egg + blackberrytop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together472 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable body as it cools.
Eggs
Egg whites whip into a stiff foam that makes the sponge light and airy.
Blackberry juice
Provides the main fruit flavour and the deep colour of the sponge.
Sugar
Sweetens the sponge and balances the tartness of the blackberry juice.

The step that matters

Chilling until cold and thick before whipping. If the gelatine mixture is still warm, the egg whites will deflate when folded in and the sponge may not hold its shape. If it is chilled too long, it sets lumpy. Stop when it is thick like unbeaten egg white.

Swap the blackberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Blackberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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