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Dessert

Sponge Cake Pudding

A sponge cake pudding served with a lemon butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sponge Cake Pudding

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 the batter

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

  2. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately.

  3. Combine the sugar, sweet milk, baking soda, cream of tartar, and flour.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  5. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish and bake until golden.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, cream together 2 cups of sugar and 1 cup of butter.

  2. Add the grated lemon rind and juice, mixing well.

  3. Pour boiling water into the mixture until it thickens.

Serve

  1. Serve the pudding warm with the lemon sauce.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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
Whipped whites trap air for lift, while yolks add richness and structure to the crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the sponge together as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the crumb tender and moist.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a soft, smooth texture in the sauce.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that makes it rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter, helping the leavening react and stabilising the rise.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Whipped egg whites hold air that gives the sponge its lift. Stirring vigorously knocks that air out, leaving a dense, flat pudding instead of a light one.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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