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Dessert

Cream Sponge Cake

A light sponge cake made with eggs, flour, sugar, sweet cream, and lemon extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Cream Sponge Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs thoroughly.

  2. Add the cream, sugar, and 1 cup of flour; mix well.

  3. Sift the cream of tartar with ½ cup of flour and add to the mixture.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in 1 tablespoon of warm water and stir it in.

  5. Add the lemon extract and mix until combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a pan lined with parchment paper.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until done, being careful not to burn.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Flour and egg 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
Beaten eggs trap air and provide structure as the cake sets.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the cake its body and structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and keep moisture.
Sweet cream
Adds fat and moisture, giving a softer, richer crumb.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter and stabilizes the beaten eggs, supporting lift.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.

The step that matters

Baking until done without burning. Baking soda and cream of tartar only lift the batter while it is still in the oven, so the cake must bake long enough to set its structure, yet not so long that the surface scorches. Check doneness by a toothpick test rather than by time alone.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, egg, cream):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, egg, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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