Skip to main content
Dessert

Water Sponge-cake

A sponge cake made from eggs, sugar, flour, water, and leavening, baked and fried, finished with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Water 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.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat 6 eggs and gradually add 4 cups sugar, mixing until well combined.

  3. Sift in 4 cups flour, then add 1 cup cold water, 2 teaspoons cream of tartar, and 1 teaspoon baking soda; mix until smooth.

  4. In another bowl, combine 1 pint milk, 1 cup melted butter, and 1 cup yeast; mix well and add to batter.

Rise and mix

  1. Knead dough with flour until stiff, then set aside to rise overnight.

  2. The next morning, add 2 cups sugar, 4 eggs, grated nutmeg, and cinnamon to dough; mix thoroughly.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape dough into cakes like ladyfingers.

  2. Fry cakes in boiling lard until light brown, then remove with a perforated skimmer and let cool.

Finish

  1. While still hot, sprinkle fine sugar over cakes.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the stiff dough that gives the cakes their structure.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set.
Sugar
Sweetens the cakes and helps them brown when fried.
Yeast
Produces gas during the overnight rise, lightening the dough.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to release gas and lift the cakes.
Butter
Adds fat for moisture and a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Frying in boiling lard until light brown. If the lard is too cool, the cakes absorb grease and turn heavy; if too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks through. Keeping the fat steadily hot gives a light, evenly cooked cake.

“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.

More water sponge cake recipes

Hot 26Ice 3 See all 12 →

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes