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Dessert

Sponge Cake Pudding

A sponge cake pudding served with a lemon butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sponge Cake 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 cake

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

  2. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately.

  3. Combine the sugar, sweet milk, baking soda, cream of tartar, and flour.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  5. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish and bake until golden.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, cream together 2 cups of sugar and 1 cup of butter.

  2. Add the grated lemon rind and juice, mixing well.

  3. Pour boiling water into the mixture until thickened.

Serve

  1. Serve the pudding warm with the 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Whipped separately, the whites trap air that gives the cake its light, spongy structure.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar and batter acidity to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidic partner to baking soda, releasing gas for lift and stabilising the whipped egg whites.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the batter bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded texture and flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and sauce and helps the cake brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Stirring hard knocks air out of the whipped whites, so the cake loses the lift they provide and turns dense.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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