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Dessert

Berwick Sponge Cake

A sponge cake made with eggs, powdered sugar, flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, cold water, and lemon.

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 ↓

Berwick 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.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs for 2 minutes.

  2. Add the powdered sugar and beat for 5 minutes.

  3. Stir the cream of tartar into 2 cups of flour, then add it to the egg and sugar mixture and beat for 1 minute.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in the cold water and add it to the mixture.

  5. Wash and dry the lemon, then add both the juice and grated rind.

  6. Finally, add the remaining 2 cups of flour and beat all ingredients together for 1 minute.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into two deep cake tins and bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

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 + 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 with sugar to trap air, giving the cake its light structure.
Flour
Provides the gluten and starch network that sets the cake's structure as it bakes.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps stabilise the whipped egg foam.
Cream of tartar
Stabilises the egg foam and adds a slight acidity to help the cake rise evenly.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas, helping the cake rise.

The step that matters

Beating the eggs and sugar. Whipping eggs and sugar thoroughly traps air bubbles that expand in the oven. Under-beating leaves a dense cake, while the later flour must be folded or beaten gently so the air is not knocked out.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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