Skip to main content
Dessert

Anotker Way to Make Spunge Cake

A sponge cake made with flour, sugar, eggs, lemon, rose water, brandy, and caraway seeds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,435 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Anotker Way to Make Spunge Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. In a large bowl, beat the egg yolks and whites separately until fluffy.

  3. Combine the flour, sugar, lemon peel, lemon juice, rose water, brandy, and caraway seeds.

  4. Mix all ingredients together for 1 hour using a hand mixer.

Bake and finish

  1. Butter a cake tin and line it with buttered paper.

  2. Pour the batter into the prepared tin and sift pounded sugar over the top.

  3. Bake for 1 hour.

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. Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + carawaytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together270 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Lemon + rosetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,174 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Rose + carawaytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together93 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped whites trap air that lifts the cake, and yolks add richness and structure.
All-purpose flour
Its proteins and starch set during baking to give the cake its firm crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps stabilise the beaten eggs while it bakes.
Caraway seeds
Contribute a warm, aromatic flavour to the sponge.
Lemon peel
Adds bright citrus aroma from the oils in the zest.

The step that matters

Mix all ingredients together for 1 hour. Long mixing develops gluten and can deflate the air beaten into the eggs, so the sponge may bake dense. Mix only until the batter is smooth and evenly combined.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, egg, rose, brandy, caraway. 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.

More sponge cake recipes

Lemon 108White 98Cream 70Pudding 58Plain 48Velvet 40 See all 880 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesBrandy PeachesBrandy Peaches68 recipes