Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
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.
Prepare
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the water and powdered sugar.
Make the batter
Sift the cream of tartar into the flour and add to the egg mixture.
If the batter is too thin, add a little more flour.
Just before baking, dissolve the baking soda in water and add it to the batter.
Flavor the batter with lemon or vanilla.
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.
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together30,404 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 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 eggs trap air and form the cake's main structure as they set.
- Powdered sugar
- Sweetens the batter and helps give the crumb a fine, tender texture.
- Flour
- Provides the starch and protein that set into the cake's structure.
- Cream of tartar
- Adds acidity that helps stabilize the beaten egg foam and reacts with baking soda.
- Baking soda
- Releases carbon dioxide gas in the acidic batter, lifting the cake as it bakes.
The step that matters
Add the baking soda just before baking. Baking soda starts releasing gas as soon as it meets the acid in the batter. If it sits too long, the gas escapes before baking, so the cake rises less.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, cream, flour):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits about as well
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, cream, 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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