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Dessert

Sponge Pudding

A light, frothy cake made from eggs, sugar, flour, baking soda, and lemon, topped with frosting and served with lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Sponge Pudding

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.

Make the batter

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

  2. Beat the eggs and sugar until frothy.

  3. Stir in the cold water.

  4. Mix in the flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

  5. Flavor with lemon and pour into two shallow dishes.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 25 minutes.

  2. Frost with frosting No. 2 and let stand in a warm place for 10 minutes.

  3. Serve with lemon sauce.

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. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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
Beaten with sugar to trap air, giving the pudding its light, airy structure.
Flour
Forms the structure that sets as the pudding bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with cream of tartar to produce gas that makes the pudding rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with baking soda to help it rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps stabilize the beaten eggs into a foam.

The step that matters

Beat the eggs and sugar until frothy. Whipping eggs with sugar creates a foam that holds air bubbles. Underbeaten eggs give a dense pudding, so the foam must be well formed before the flour is added.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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