Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
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
Break the eggs into a bowl and beat them well.
Add the sugar and sweet milk, and mix thoroughly.
Sift in the flour and baking powder, and stir until combined.
Add a few drops of Coleman's flavoring extract.
Bake
Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.
Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until golden and a toothpick comes out clean.
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.
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + milktop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
- Provide structure and lift by trapping air when beaten, setting as the cake bakes.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the batter and helps the crumb brown as it bakes.
- French's white lily flour
- Forms the gluten network that gives the cake its structure.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.
- Sweet milk
- Adds moisture and helps form a tender crumb.
The step that matters
Sift in the flour and baking powder, and stir until combined.. Stirring only until the flour is combined keeps gluten development limited, so the cake stays tender rather than tough. Overmixing toughens the crumb and can knock out the air trapped by the eggs.
“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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