Skip to main content
Dessert

Chocolate Sponge Cake

A chocolate sponge cake with a simple icing of sugar, milk, vanilla, and optional pecans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Chocolate 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 cake batter

  1. Melt the chocolate over hot water.

  2. Stir in 1 cup of powdered sugar and 1 cup of milk until smooth.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and 1 cup of powdered sugar until very light.

  4. Add the hot chocolate mixture and continue beating.

  5. Flavor with vanilla extract.

  6. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  7. Gently mix in the flour and baking powder.

Bake and make the icing

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until done, preferably in two layers.

  2. For icing, butter a saucepan and add 1.5 cups of sugar and ½ cup of milk.

  3. Cook to the soft-ball stage, then remove from heat.

  4. Flavor with vanilla and stir in chopped pecans until creamy.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Vanilla + pecanstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,691 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Chocolate + pecanstop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Whites trapped by folding give the sponge its light, airy structure.
Unsweetened chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and deep color of the cake.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the cake its set structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise in the oven.
Milk
Adds moisture to the batter, softening the crumb.

The step that matters

Cook the icing to the soft-ball stage. Sugar syrup must reach the right temperature to set correctly. Too little cooking leaves the icing runny, while overcooking makes it hard and grainy as it cools.

Swap the pecans

The recipe marks pecans as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chocolate, sugar, milk, egg, vanilla, flour):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Pecansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chocolate, sugar, milk, egg, vanilla, flour. 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.

You might also like

Chocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesChocolate CookiesChocolate Cookies76 recipesChocolate FudgeChocolate Fudge55 recipes