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Dessert

Cream Sponge Cake

A sponge cake topped with a thickened milk and egg 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.

Make the cake

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix 1 cup sugar, 1½ cups flour, 3 eggs, 1 teaspoon cream of tartar, and ½ teaspoon baking soda until smooth.

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

Make the cream

  1. Heat 1 pint milk in a saucepan for the cream.

  2. In a separate bowl, whisk together 2 eggs, 2 tablespoons flour, 1 tablespoon corn starch, and 1 cup sugar.

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

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 and richness, setting the custard and lifting the cake crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake and thickens the cream.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the whipped egg structure and helps give the cake a lighter texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidic ingredients to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Corn starch
Thickens the cream as it heats, giving it a smooth, set texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream and adds moisture and richness.

The step that matters

Gradually add the egg mixture to the hot milk, stirring constantly until thickened.. Adding the egg mixture too fast or without constant stirring can scramble the eggs. Gradual tempering and steady stirring let the starch and egg proteins thicken the cream 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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