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Dessert

To Make a Sponge Cake

A sponge cake made with flour, sugar, water, eggs, and lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Jacqueline Harrison Smith (ed.) · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar 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

Directions

Prepare

  1. Take ¾ of a pound of fine sugar and ¼ pint of water; let it just boil enough to skim it clean.

  2. Take 7 eggs, leave out 4 whites; when they are beaten and strained, add the finely cut peel of a large lemon.

Make the batter

  1. Add the hot sugar and water to the eggs, putting in a little at a time, beating the eggs all the time with a whisk. Beat for an hour.

  2. Add the ½ pound of sifted and dried flour a little at a time; do not beat after the flour is added, stir with a spoon.

Bake

  1. Bake for 50 minutes.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

582Calories
19 gProtein
6 gFat
108 gCarbs

Counts 3 of 4 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 3 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Waternot in our table0

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and egg 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 into foam, they trap air that gives the sponge its light structure.
Flour
Sets the structure of the cake as it bakes, holding the airy foam in place.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps stabilise the beaten egg foam.

The step that matters

Do not beat after the flour is added. Once flour is mixed in, further beating develops gluten and deflates the foam, making the sponge tough and flat. Folding or gentle stirring keeps the air in the batter.

“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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