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Dessert

Boiled Sponge Cake

A sponge cake made by boiling sugar and water, then folding into beaten egg whites and yolks, baked at 300°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Boiled Sponge Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the egg base

  1. Separate the eggs.

  2. Beat the egg whites with cream of tartar until stiff.

  3. Boil the sugar and water until it forms a thread.

  4. Beat the sugar syrup into the egg whites until cold.

  5. Beat the yolks until light.

  6. Gently stir the yolks into the egg white mixture.

Add flour and bake

  1. Sift the flour once before measuring.

  2. Sift the flour 3 or 4 more times.

  3. Fold the flour into the mixture carefully.

  4. Add flavoring if desired.

  5. Bake in an angel food pan for one hour at 300°F (150°C).

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  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. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. 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
Whipped whites build the airy foam that gives the cake its structure and lift.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, cooked to a syrup, helps stabilize the whipped egg whites.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the egg whites, helping them whip to a stable, stiff foam.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten that set the cake's crumb once baked.

The step that matters

Beat the sugar syrup into the egg whites until cold. The syrup must be hot enough to thread but the whites must be cooled to a stable foam; if the mixture is still warm, the foam can deflate and the cake may collapse or turn dense.

“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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