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Dessert

Sponge Cake

A light, airy cake made from eggs, sugar, flour, salt, and citrus zest.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

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.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs with the powdered sugar until well combined.

  2. Add the sifted flour, salt, and the grated rinds of the orange and lemon; mix well.

  3. Whisk the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gently fold them into the mixture.

  4. Pour the batter into buttered pans, filling them halfway.

Bake

  1. Bake for 45 minutes, covering the cake with paper for the first half of baking.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  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 + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 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
Whipped whites trap air for lift, and yolks add richness and structure as the cake sets.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps create a fine, tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's risen foam in shape as it bakes.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites hold air only when whipped to stiff peaks. Folding gently keeps that air in the batter; overmixing deflates it, leaving a denser cake after baking.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Orangethe original
  4. Blueberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, lemon. 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.

More sponge cake recipes

Lemon 108White 98Cream 70Pudding 58Plain 48Velvet 40 See all 880 →

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