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Dessert

Sponge Pudding

A steamed sponge pudding made with sugar, water, flour, baking powder, and beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Sponge Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix sugar, water, flour, and baking powder.

  2. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Steam

  1. Steam for one hour.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Flour and egg 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

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the pudding's crumb together as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking, helping the pudding rise and become light.
Eggs
Whites trap air and add lift, while the yolks add richness and structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to a tender crumb and mild browning.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Beaten whites hold air bubbles that give the pudding lift. Stirring vigorously deflates them, which leads to a dense, heavy result. Fold slowly with a spatula until just combined.

“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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