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Dessert

Sponge Cake Roll

A rolled sponge cake made with eggs, sugar, flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 Roll

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately.

  3. Mix the sugar, flour, and cream of tartar together.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in a little water and add it to the mixture.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Bake and roll

  1. Pour the batter into a biscuit pan and bake until golden.

  2. Turn the cake out onto a damp towel.

  3. Spread with dressing and roll while warm.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. 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 whites trap air, giving the cake its light, airy structure.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten that set the cake's structure as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps stabilize the beaten egg whites.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the egg whites, stabilizing their foam so it holds its volume.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to release gas that helps the cake rise.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Beaten whites hold the air that makes the cake light. Stirring vigorously deflates the foam, leaving a dense, flat sponge that may crack when rolled.

“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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