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Dessert

Plain Sponge Cake

A light, fluffy cake made with egg, sugar, milk, flour, leavening agents, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Plain 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.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a mixing bowl, beat the egg and sugar until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the sweet milk and mix well.

  3. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until just combined.

  5. Pour the batter into greased pans the size of a breakfast plate.

Bake

  1. Bake for 15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

Egg
Adds structure and richness, and helps bind the batter together.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay tender when beaten with the egg.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises in the oven.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter and helps baking soda react for lift and a tender crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic ingredients to produce gas that helps the cake rise.

The step that matters

Stirring the dry ingredients into the wet mixture. Stir only until just combined. Once flour is mixed with liquid, gluten begins to form, and overmixing makes the cake tough and dense rather than 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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