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Dessert

Minute Sponge Cake

A light sponge cake made by beating eggs, sugar, flour, and baking soda, then baking in jelly tins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Minute Sponge Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs for 2 minutes.

  2. Add the sugar and beat for 1 minute.

  3. Mix in 1 cup of flour with the cream of tartar and beat for 1 minute.

  4. Combine the cold water with the baking soda and add to the mixture.

  5. Add the remaining 1 cup of flour and beat for 1 minute.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into jelly tins and bake.

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
Trap air when beaten, forming the foam that gives the cake its light structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps stabilize the beaten egg foam.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten that set the cake's structure as it bakes.
Cream of tartar
Acid that reacts with baking soda to release gas and helps stabilize the foam.
Baking soda
Releases carbon dioxide with the acid, helping the batter rise in the oven.

The step that matters

Adding the water and baking soda, then the last flour, with minimal beating. The air trapped in the beaten eggs gives the cake its rise. Overbeating after the flour goes in can toughen the gluten, and slow mixing loses the gas from the baking soda and acid, so the cake may rise poorly.

“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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