Name: To Make a Sponge Cake
Ingredients: 5 large eggs, separated; ½ lb lump sugar (1 cup); 1 pint water (4 cups); ½ lb flour (2 cups)

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 ↓

To Make a Sponge Cake

Ingredients

5 large eggs, separated
½ lb lump sugar (1 cup)
1 pint water (4 cups)
½ lb flour (2 cups)

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.

Prepare

Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a saucepan, boil the water and sugar together, then skim off any foam.

Make the batter

In a bowl, beat 5 egg yolks and 2 egg whites until well combined.
Pour the boiling sugar water into the egg mixture while whisking continuously for 30 minutes.
Gently fold in the flour until just combined.

Bake

Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 25-30 minutes or until golden.

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.

Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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: Whisked into a foam, they give the sponge its light, airy structure and moisture.
Flour: Sets the cake's structure once heated, holding the airy crumb in place.
Sugar: Sweetens the cake and helps stabilize the whipped egg foam.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling sugar water into the eggs. Adding the hot syrup slowly while whisking continuously stabilizes the egg foam and gently cooks the eggs without scrambling them, keeping the batter light.

“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.

More sponge cake recipes

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To Make a Sponge Cake