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Dessert

A Small Sponge Cake

A light, airy cake made with butter, sugar, egg, milk, cream of tartar, baking soda, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

A Small 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 bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the egg and milk, mixing well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the cream of tartar and baking soda with flour.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until smooth.

  5. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

Bake

  1. 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender, light crumb.
Sugar
Creamed with butter to aerate the batter and adds sweetness and browning.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to produce gas that makes the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Provides acidity that activates the baking soda, helping the cake rise.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as it bakes.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Adding dry ingredients slowly and stirring only until smooth keeps the batter evenly mixed. Overmixing once flour is added develops gluten, which can make the cake tough and 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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