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Dessert

Cream Sponge Cake

A light sponge cake made with eggs, sweet cream, sugar, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a mixing bowl, beat the eggs until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the sweet cream and white sugar, mixing well.

  3. Sift together the cream of tartar and baking soda, then fold into the mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

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

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

  2. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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
Whisked into foam, they trap air that gives the cake its light structure.
White sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps hold moisture and a tender crumb.
Sweet cream
Adds fat and moisture, making the crumb richer and softer.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter, reacting with baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to release gas that lifts the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the cream of tartar and baking soda. Fold gently so the air from the beaten eggs is not knocked out. Overmixing deflates the batter, and the leavening gas then has less air to expand, giving a flatter, denser cake.

“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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