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Dessert

Berwick Sponge Cake

A light sponge cake flavored with lemon, baked in a shallow tin and filled with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Berwick Sponge Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Separate the yolks from the whites of the eggs.

  3. Beat the yolks until thick and lemon-colored, then gradually add sugar while continuing to beat.

  4. Add water and flavoring to the yolk mixture.

  5. Beat the egg whites until stiff and dry, then gently fold them into the yolk mixture.

  6. Sift the flour mixed with baking powder over the egg mixture and fold it in carefully.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the batter into greased shallow tins or a loaf pan.

  2. Bake until golden brown.

  3. Split the cake and fill with cream.

  4. Sprinkle the top with powdered sugar.

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. 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, giving the sponge its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the yolks whip to a stable, thick foam.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that sets the crumb once the cake bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the heat, helping the batter rise and become tender.

The step that matters

Folding the egg whites into the yolk mixture. Whites hold air only while whipped; overmixing or stirring vigorously deflates them, so the cake bakes up dense instead of light. Fold gently in large strokes.

“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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