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Dessert

Cream Sponge Cake

A light sponge cake made with butter, cream, eggs, flour, sugar, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cream 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.

Make the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, rub the butter into the powdered sugar until well combined.

  3. In another bowl, beat the egg yolks and heavy cream together until smooth.

  4. Stir the egg yolk mixture into the flour.

Fold and bake

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gently fold the egg whites into the batter.

  3. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for about 30 minutes.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins and starches set during baking.
Unsalted butter
Adds fat that makes the crumb tender and rich.
Heavy cream
Adds moisture and fat for a soft, tender texture.
Eggs
Give structure and, when beaten whites are folded in, help the cake rise.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and helps create a fine, even crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, lifting the batter as it bakes.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Fold the whipped whites in gently with a spatula, cutting through the batter, so the trapped air is not knocked out. That air expands in the oven and gives the cake its lift.

“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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