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Dessert

Sponge Cake Pudding

A baked sponge cake pudding flavored with lemon, topped with frosting and served with rich wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sponge Cake Pudding

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.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat together the sugar and egg yolks until frothy.

  3. Add the grated lemon rind and juice, mixing well.

  4. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the yolk mixture.

  5. Gently stir in the sifted flour until just combined.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter a high-shaped mold and pour in the batter.

  2. Bake for about 30 minutes, testing with a broom straw for doneness.

  3. Turn the pudding out onto a serving dish and top with frosting.

  4. Serve with a rich wine sauce.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 peaks, they trap air that makes the pudding light and rise.
Egg yolks
Add richness and structure as they set during baking, binding the cake.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the risen batter once it sets in the oven.
Fine white sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps stabilise the yolks when beaten.
Lemon juice and rind
Add acidity and bright aroma that balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites must be beaten to stiff peaks and folded gently; overmixing knocks out the trapped air, so the pudding bakes denser and less risen.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, flour, butter, wine, sauce. 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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