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Dessert

Cream Sponge Cake

A sponge cake layered with a milk-based cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the cake

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

  2. In a bowl, mix sugar, flour, eggs, cream of tartar, and baking soda until smooth.

  3. Divide the batter into 8 layers.

  4. Bake until golden.

Make the cream

  1. Heat milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs, flour, cornstarch, and sugar.

  3. Slowly add the egg mixture to the hot milk, stirring constantly until thickened.

  4. Let the cream cool before spreading it between the cake layers.

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Provide structure to the sponge and thicken the cream as they set with heat.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the sponge and thickens the cream.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it tender and moist.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the egg foam and helps the batter rise evenly.
Baking soda
Reacts to create gas that helps the cake rise and brown.
Cornstarch
Thickens the cream so it sets smoothly when cooled.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture to the hot milk. Pouring the eggs in too quickly or without constant stirring can scramble them. Stirring steadily while adding the mixture lets the starch and egg proteins thicken the cream evenly and smoothly.

“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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