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Dessert

Anise Sponge Cake

A light sponge cake flavored with anise, baked and then toasted after cooling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Anise and flour work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 270 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Anise Sponge Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Stir the yolks of three eggs with one cup of sugar for twenty-five minutes.

  2. Add three tablespoons of cold water, two teaspoons of anise seed, one cup of flour, and one teaspoon of baking powder.

  3. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in a large pan until cooked through.

  2. Once cooled, cut into strips.

  3. Toast in the oven.

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. Anise + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together270 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Sugar + anisetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together328 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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 and beaten yolks trap air, giving the sponge its light, airy structure.
Flour
Its proteins set during baking, giving the cake its firm, sliceable structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the yolks hold air while they are beaten.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and become tender.
Anise seed
Adds a distinctive licorice-like aroma to the sponge.
Cold water
Adds moisture to the batter, loosening it for an even texture.

The step that matters

Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Whites hold air only when beaten stiff. Folding gently rather than stirring keeps that air in the batter, so the cake rises light instead of dense.

Swap the anise

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Anisethe original

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

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