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Dessert

Winter Sponge Cake

A sponge cake flavored with lemon zest and juice, made with eggs, sugar, flour, cream of tartar, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Winter 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

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

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs until frothy.

  3. Gradually add the sugar and continue beating until well combined.

Make the batter

  1. Sift together the flour and cream of tartar, then fold into the egg mixture.

  2. Slowly add the boiling water and lemon juice, mixing gently.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared pan and bake 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 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. Coffee + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,339 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

Eggs
Whipped to a foam, they provide the air and structure that lift the sponge.
Sugar
Beaten with the eggs, it sweetens the cake and helps stabilise the foam.
All-purpose flour
Sets during baking to give the sponge its body once the batter is folded in.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the egg foam, helping it stay stable and giving a finer crumb.
Boiling water
Adds moisture and loosens the batter, keeping the sponge tender.

The step that matters

Folding the flour into the egg mixture. Folding gently preserves the air whipped into the eggs. Stirring vigorously or overmixing deflates the foam, leaving a dense, flat sponge.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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