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Dessert

Caramel Sponge

A caramel-flavored sponge cake made with sugar, water, gelatine, lemon juice, and egg whites, served chilled with boiled custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Caramel Sponge

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel base

  1. Cook the sugar in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly until it melts and caramelizes.

  2. Add the water and stir until well combined with the sugar.

  3. Soften the gelatine in the cold water.

  4. Add the softened gelatine to the hot sugar mixture.

  5. Cool the mixture slightly.

  6. Stir in the strained lemon juice.

Whip and set

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff and dry.

  2. Fold the beaten egg whites into the jelly using an egg beater.

  3. Continue to beat occasionally until the mixture holds its shape.

  4. Pour the mixture into a mold.

Serve

  1. Serve chilled with boiled custard.

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 + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam that gives the set dessert its light, airy structure.
Gelatine
Sets the liquid mixture into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Sugar
Caramelizes for color and a deep, toasted sweetness in the base.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet caramel flavor.

The step that matters

Folding the beaten egg whites into the jelly. Egg whites hold air only when beaten stiff and the jelly is cool but still fluid. If the jelly is too hot, the foam collapses; if it has already set, the whites will not blend smoothly and the airy texture is lost.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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