Skip to main content
Dessert

To Make Small Sponge Cakes

A light cake made from eggs, flour, sugar, and flavoring, baked until pale.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
To Make Small Sponge Cakes

Why it works: Flour and sugar 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 ↓

To Make Small Sponge Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Ensure the flour is perfectly dry and the sugar is well pounded and sifted.

  2. Separate the egg whites from the yolks and beat the yolks with the sugar.

Make the batter

  1. Whisk the egg whites until stiff and gently fold them into the yolk mixture.

  2. Gradually sift in the flour and add the flavoring.

  3. Butter the tins well and pour in the batter.

Bake and finish

  1. Sift a little sugar over the cakes and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until pale.

  2. Remove the cakes from the tins before they cool and turn them upside down until completely cool.

  3. Store them in a closed tin.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + sugartop 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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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 whites trap air and, with the yolks, give the cakes their light, airy structure.
Flour
Sifted into the batter, it provides the set structure that holds the cake's airy crumb.
Pounded loaf sugar
Beaten with the yolks, it sweetens the cake and helps stabilize the batter's texture.

The step that matters

Folding the whites into the yolk mixture. Whites hold air only when whisked stiff, and overmixing or heavy stirring knocks that air out. Folding gently keeps the batter light so the sponge rises well in the oven.

“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

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes