Skip to main content
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
Jump to recipe ↓

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 and fold them into the mixture.

  4. In a separate bowl, mix the remaining 1 cup of flour with the baking powder, then fold it into the batter.

  5. Slowly stir in the boiling water a little at a time.

  6. Add a pinch of salt and do not add more flour, even if the mixture seems thin.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into shallow tins 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 + 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
Whipped whites trap air for lift, while yolks add richness and structure.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the cake its set structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises in the oven.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and dissolves easily into the yolks for a smooth mix.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiff whites hold the air that lifts the sponge. Stirring them in vigorously or letting them deflate before folding leads to a flat, dense cake.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes