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Dessert

Cream Sponge Cake

A layered sponge cake with a thickened milk and egg cream filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cream Sponge Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Bake the cake

  1. Make a sponge cake and bake it in three or four layers.

Make the cream

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Beat the eggs in a bowl and mix in the sugar and flour.

  3. Stir the egg mixture into the boiling milk and cook until it thickens.

  4. Flavor the cream as desired.

Assemble

  1. Spread the cream between the cake layers and ice the top.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Their proteins set when heated, thickening the milk mixture into a cream.
Flour
Gives structure to the mixture so it holds its shape when set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the texture of the cream and cake.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream and adds moisture.

The step that matters

Stir the egg mixture into the boiling milk and cook until it thickens. Egg proteins set when heated, so the cream can turn lumpy or curdle if it overheats or is not stirred while it thickens. Keep stirring and cook only until it coats a spoon.

“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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