Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓
Sponge Pudding
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.
Prepare the batter
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Cream together the margarine and castor sugar.
Add the beaten egg yolk and mix well.
Gently fold in the flour and baking powder.
Beat the egg white to stiff peaks and fold into the mixture.
Bake and serve
Pour the batter into a dish and bake for 1 hour.
Turn out the pudding and serve with marmalade or sweet sauce.
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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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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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 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
- Margarine
- Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the pudding a tender, rich crumb.
- Castor sugar
- Creamed with the fat to help hold air bubbles and add sweetness and light browning.
- Egg yolk
- Adds richness and emulsifies the fat, giving a smooth, tender batter.
- Millennium flour
- Forms the main structure of the pudding as its proteins set during baking.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas in the batter so the pudding rises and becomes light.
- Egg white
- Beaten to stiff peaks, it traps air that lifts the batter and makes it light.
The step that matters
Folding in the beaten egg white. Folding gently keeps the air bubbles in the whipped egg white intact. Overmixing deflates the batter, so the pudding bakes up denser and less light.
“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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