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Dessert

White Sponge Cake

A light, airy sponge cake made with egg whites, sugar, flour, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

White Sponge Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

  2. Sift the cream of tartar into the flour six times.

  3. Sprinkle the salt over the egg whites and beat them to stiff peaks.

  4. Gently stir the sugar into the beaten egg whites.

  5. Fold in the flour mixture and then add the flavoring quickly.

Bake and cool

  1. Pour the batter into an ungreased round 3-quart pan with a tube in the center.

  2. Bake for 55 minutes, or until a broom straw inserted comes out clean.

  3. Invert the pan and let it rest on the tube for 1 hour to cool.

  4. Once cool, use a sharp knife to loosen the cake from the pan.

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 + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

Egg whites
Whipped into stiff peaks, they form the airy structure that lifts the cake.
Flour
Sifted and folded in, it provides the set structure that holds the foam.
Sugar
Stirred into the whites, it sweetens the cake and helps stabilize the foam.
Cream of tartar
Sifted into the flour, it acidifies the egg whites so they whip more stably.

The step that matters

Fold in the flour mixture and then add the flavoring quickly. Folding gently keeps the air bubbles in the whipped whites; overmixing deflates the foam and produces a dense, tough cake.

“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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