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Dessert

Fruit Sponge Cake

A sponge cake with figs, raisins, currants, and coconut baked in a straight-sided tin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fruit Sponge Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix the egg yolks with sugar until very smooth.

  4. Combine baking soda and cream of tartar with the flour.

  5. Gently stir all ingredients together until the mixture is covered with bubbles.

Layer and bake

  1. Spread a thin layer of batter in the bottom of a straight-sided tin.

  2. Layer the chopped figs, raisins, currants, and coconut on top of the batter.

  3. Pour the remaining batter over the fruit layer.

  4. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until golden.

  5. Let the cake cool in the tin for 24 hours before removing.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Fig + raisintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Lemon + figtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together763 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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, giving the sponge its light, airy structure.
Pastry flour
Provides the starch and gluten that set the crumb once baked.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps stabilise the whipped egg yolks into a smooth batter.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter and stabilises whipped egg whites, helping them hold their volume.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Dried figs and raisins
Add moisture, chewiness and natural sweetness to the fruit layer.

The step that matters

Gently stir all ingredients together. Folding rather than beating keeps the air bubbles from the whipped whites intact. Overmixing deflates them, so the sponge bakes up dense instead of light.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Blackberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, cream, lemon, fig, raisin. 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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