Skip to main content
Dessert

Velvet Sponge Cake

A light sponge cake made with egg yolks, egg whites, sugar, flour, baking powder, boiling water, lemon extract, and iced with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Velvet 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. Beat the egg yolks lightly.

  3. Add the sugar and beat for 15 minutes.

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

  5. Add the boiling water to the yolk and sugar mixture just before incorporating the flour.

  6. Flavor the batter with lemon extract.

  7. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake and ice

  1. Divide the batter into 3 layers and bake until golden.

  2. For the icing, beat 3 egg whites until stiff.

  3. Gradually add 18 teaspoons of powdered sugar.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Egg and flour 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

Egg whites
Beaten to stiff peaks and folded in, they lighten the batter and give the cake its airy structure.
Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, giving the cake a tender crumb and golden color.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it sets in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and, beaten with the yolks, helps trap air for lightness.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the cake rise.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air only while they are whipped. Stirring vigorously deflates them and the cake bakes flat and dense, so fold in slowly with a spatula.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, flour. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes