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Dessert

Victoria Sandwich

A small cake sandwich made with sugar, ground rice, eggs, jam, and flour, baked and assembled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Victoria Sandwich

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Beat the eggs and sugar until thick.

  3. Add the flour and ground rice, and mix thoroughly.

  4. Pour the batter into two greased and lined cake tins of the same size.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake for 7 to 10 minutes.

  2. Turn the cakes out onto a piece of paper sprinkled with castor sugar.

  3. Once cool, spread jam on one cake and place the other on top.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + ricetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 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

Eggs
Beaten with sugar to trap air, giving the sponge its light structure.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the sponge as its proteins set during baking.
Ground rice
Adds a tender, slightly crumbly texture to the crumb.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the beaten eggs hold their air.
Jam
Adds sweetness and fruity moisture between the two layers.

The step that matters

Beat the eggs and sugar until thick. Whisking air into the eggs and sugar creates the foam that makes the sponge rise. If the mixture is under-whisked, the cakes will be dense and flat.

“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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