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Dessert

Cream Sponge Cake

A light sponge cake with coconut filling and icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 306 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Cream 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.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs for 2 minutes.

  2. Add the sugar and beat for 5 minutes.

  3. Mix in the flour and beat for 1 minute.

  4. Add the cold water, flavor with lemon or vanilla, and mix in the baking powder and salt.

  5. Pour the batter into jelly cake pans to make two layers.

Bake and make the filling

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

  2. For the filling, combine the egg yolks, sugar, corn starch, milk, and lemon in a saucepan and cook until it thickens into a custard.

  3. Let the custard cool, then spread it on the cooled cake and sprinkle with grated coconut.

Ice and finish

  1. For the icing, beat the egg whites and gradually add the powdered sugar until smooth.

  2. Spread the icing on top of the cake and sprinkle with coconut.

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. Coconut + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together306 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Coconut + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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, giving the sponge its light, airy structure.
Flour
Provides the starch and protein that set the cake's structure as it bakes.
White sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps hold air during beating for a tender crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the layers rise and become light.
Corn starch
Thickens the filling into a smooth custard as it cooks with the milk.
Egg whites
Whipped with powdered sugar to form a smooth, sweet icing that holds its shape.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard filling. Corn starch thickens only when the mixture reaches a boil while being stirred. Stopping early leaves a thin filling, while overcooking can cause scorching or lumps from the eggs.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, flour, coconut, corn, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, coconut, corn, milk. 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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