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Dessert

Sponge Cake Pudding

A sponge cake made with eggs, flour, sugar, water, and baking powder, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar 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 Cake Pudding

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, beat the eggs until fluffy.

  2. Gradually add the sugar, mixing well.

  3. Sift the flour and baking powder together, then fold into the egg mixture.

  4. Add the water and mix until smooth.

  5. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 30‑35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. Serve warm with hot sauce.

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 + sugartop 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
Beaten until fluffy, they trap air and give the cake its light, airy structure.
Flour
Its starch sets during baking, forming the cake's main structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps tenderize the crumb while it is beaten with the eggs.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the batter rise and become lighter.
Water
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it mixes smooth and bakes evenly.

The step that matters

Fold the flour and baking powder into the eggs. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the eggs. Stirring hard knocks that air out, so the cake rises less and turns dense.

“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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