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Dessert

White Sponge Cake

A light, airy cake made with sifted flour, powdered sugar, cream of tartar, egg whites, lemon extract, and a pinch of salt.

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 ↓

White 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 the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Sift together the flour, powdered sugar, cream of tartar, and salt into a bowl.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

Mix and bake

  1. Gently fold the egg whites into the flour mixture until well combined.

  2. Add lemon extract to the mixture and fold gently.

  3. Pour the batter into a round cake tin with a center opening.

  4. Bake carefully in the preheated oven until golden and a toothpick comes out clean.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 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).

Flour and egg 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

Whites of 10 fresh eggs
Whipped into stiff peaks, they trap air and give the cake its light, airy structure.
Flour
Provides the starch that sets during baking and gives the cake its body.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the cake and dissolves easily into the batter for a fine, tender crumb.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the whipped egg whites, helping them hold their peaks longer.

The step that matters

Folding the egg whites into the flour mixture. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the whites. Stirring vigorously deflates the foam, which leads to a dense, flat cake.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, cream, 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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