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Dessert

Plain Sponge Cake

A light, airy cake made from eggs, sugar, flour, baking powder, water, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Plain Sponge Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs with the powdered sugar until well combined.

  2. Gradually stir in 1 cup of sifted flour.

  3. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks.

  4. Fold the beaten egg whites into the mixture.

  5. In a separate bowl, mix the remaining 1 cup of flour with the baking powder.

  6. Fold this mixture into the batter.

  7. Slowly stir in the boiling water a little at a time, then add the salt.

  8. Do not add more flour, even if the mixture seems thin.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into shallow tins.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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
Whites trap air when beaten to stiff peaks, giving the cake its light, airy structure.
All-purpose flour
Starch and gluten form the cake's structure as the batter sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the cake to rise.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and contributes to a tender crumb.
Boiling water
Adds moisture and helps the starch in the flour swell, keeping the crumb soft.

The step that matters

Do not add more flour. Extra flour adds starch and gluten to a batter that is already set up with air from the whites. This makes the sponge dense and tough, so a thin-looking batter is normal and should be left as it is.

“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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