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 ↓
Sponge Cake
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
Beat the eggs for 1 minute.
Add the sugar and beat for 5 minutes.
Mix in 1 cup of flour and beat for 1 minute.
Combine 1 teaspoon of baking powder with 1 more cup of flour and add to the mixture.
Pour in ½ cup of cold water and beat for 1 minute.
Add flavoring to taste.
Bake
Bake.
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 + 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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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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 air bubbles create the foam that gives the sponge its light structure.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cake and helps stabilise the beaten egg foam.
- Flour
- Provides the starch and protein that set into the cake's structure as it bakes.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.
- Cold water
- Adds moisture to the batter, loosening it for an even crumb.
The step that matters
Beating the sugar into the eggs for 5 minutes. Long beating traps many small air bubbles in the egg foam. These bubbles expand in the oven and give the sponge its lift, so under-beating leaves a dense 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.
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