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Dessert

Ice Water Sponge Cake

A light sponge cake made with ice water, sugar, eggs, flour, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Ice Water Sponge Cake

Ingredients

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs and sugar together with 1 tablespoon of ice water for 3 to 4 minutes.

  2. Add the flour, baking powder, and remaining ice water, then fold in the beaten egg whites.

  3. Beat the mixture for another 3 to 4 minutes.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake until golden brown.

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. Sugar + eggtop 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
Provide structure and moisture, and their beaten foam helps the cake rise and become airy.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps stabilise the egg foam while beating.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure as its proteins and starches set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, causing the batter to rise.
Ice water
Adds moisture to the batter.

The step that matters

Beating after the flour is added. Once flour is in, beating too long develops gluten and knocks out the air trapped in the egg foam, which can make the cake dense and tough. Stop when the batter is just combined and smooth.

“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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