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Dessert

Sponge Jelly Cake

A light sponge cake flavored with jelly, baked in a tin and frosted with jelly or chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Sponge Jelly Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure. The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

Make the batter

  1. In another bowl, mix the egg yolks and sugar until creamy.

  2. Sift the flour and baking powder together, then add to the egg yolk mixture.

  3. Stir in the boiling water until smooth.

  4. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

  5. Pour the batter into jelly tins and bake for 15-20 minutes.

Finish

  1. Once cooled, layer with jelly or chocolate frosting between the 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. 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
Whites trap air for lift, and yolks add richness and structure to the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the yolks whip into a creamy, stable base.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten that set the cake's structure as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the whites. Stirring or deflating the batter causes it to lose volume, which leads to a dense, flat sponge.

“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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