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Dessert

Sponge Cake

A light cake made with eggs, sugar, butter, milk, flour, leavening, lemon rind, and juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Jacqueline Harrison Smith (ed.) · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Take 9 eggs.

  2. Weigh 8 eggs into granulated sugar and 4 eggs into flour.

  3. Grate rind of half a lemon and measure a tablespoonful of juice.

  4. Place sugar in a deep bowl, break the eggs, separate the whites, and beat the whites to a stiff froth.

  5. While breaking the eggs, chop each yolk into the sugar, stirring constantly until very fine and light.

Make the batter

  1. Add the grated lemon rind and then the juice.

  2. Add the beaten whites, cutting through and beating lightly, and then add the flour lightly.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease two pans, pour the batter into them, and bake in a moderately hot oven until a double broom whisk can be run through the centre of the cake and removed entirely dry.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

896Calories
28 gProtein
32 gFat
124 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 7 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Cream1 tbsp (15ml) heavy51
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Jacqueline Harrison Smith (ed.). Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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 give the sponge its light, airy structure, and yolks add richness and colour.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps stabilise the beaten egg foam.
Flour
Provides the starch that sets the cake's structure as it bakes.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and brightness that lift the flavour of the sponge.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten whites. Whites hold air only while stiff, so they should be cut through gently and lightly with the flour added softly. Overbeating or heavy stirring deflates the foam, leaving a dense cake.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

More sponge cake recipes

Lemon 108White 98Cream 70Pudding 58Plain 48Velvet 40 See all 880 →

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