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Dessert

Sponge Drops

A small, lightly leavened cake dropped onto baking sheets and baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sponge Drops

Oven, in the book's wordsA very quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Grease baking sheets with butter.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs and sugar together until frothy.

  2. Stir in the flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda until well combined.

  3. Add lemon flavoring to taste.

Bake

  1. Drop teaspoonfuls of the batter onto the sheets, spacing them about 3 inches apart.

  2. Bake immediately in a 400°F (200°C) oven, watching closely to prevent burning.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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 with sugar, they trap air that gives the drops their light, airy structure.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten that set the batter and give the drops their body.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter, stabilizing the egg foam and helping the drops keep their shape.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to release gas, helping the drops rise and lighten.
Sugar
Sweetens the drops and helps stabilize the whipped egg foam.

The step that matters

Bake immediately after dropping the batter. Leavening from the baking soda and cream of tartar starts working as soon as the batter is mixed, and the egg foam slowly loses air. Delaying the bake can leave the drops flat and dense.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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