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Dessert

White Sponge Cake

A light cake made from egg whites, sugar, flour, cream of tartar, and flavoring.

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

White Sponge Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

  2. Beat the egg whites lightly.

Mix and bake

  1. In a bowl, combine the sugar and flour with the cream of tartar.

  2. Gently stir in the beaten egg whites and flavoring.

  3. Pour the batter into a cake pan.

  4. Bake for 20 minutes, covering with paper if the oven is too hot.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that traps air and gives the cake its light, airy structure.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's airy foam once it sets in the oven.
Pulverized sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps stabilize the egg white foam while it bakes.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the egg whites, stabilizing the foam so it holds its volume longer.

The step that matters

Gently stir in the beaten egg whites. Beaten egg whites hold air in a delicate foam. Stirring vigorously deflates it, so the cake bakes up dense instead of light and airy. Fold slowly to keep the batter aerated.

“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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