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Dessert

Berwick Sponge Cake

A sponge cake made with eggs, sugar, flour, lemon, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Berwick Sponge Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs for 2 minutes until combined.

  2. Add the sugar and beat for 5 minutes.

  3. Mix in 2 cups of flour and cream of tartar, and beat for 2 minutes.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in the cold water and add it, beating for 1 minute.

  5. Add the lemon rind, lemon juice, a pinch of salt, and 2 more cups of flour, and beat for another minute.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into deep cake pans and bake.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Egg and flour 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

Eggs
Beaten to trap air, giving the sponge its light structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps hold air within the beaten batter.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Cream of tartar
Stabilises the beaten egg foam so it holds its volume.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to release gas and help the cake rise.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and brightness, and works with the baking soda to aid rising.

The step that matters

Beating the eggs and sugar. Beating the eggs and sugar well incorporates air that the batter depends on for its rise. Under-beating leaves a dense cake, while over-mixing the flour after it is added can toughen it.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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