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Dessert

Sponge Coffee Cake

A light sponge cake flavored with coffee, topped with confectioner's sugar and nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and nuts work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 638 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Sponge Coffee Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA fairly hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the batter

  1. Beat egg yolks until lemon colored, then gradually add sugar while continuing to beat until very light.

  2. Add salt and vanilla, mixing well.

  3. Sift flour and baking powder together, then add alternately with stiffly beaten egg whites to the batter.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a small, greased biscuit pan.

  2. Sprinkle the top with a mixture of confectioner's sugar and rolled nuts.

  3. Bake in a fairly hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 20 to 30 minutes.

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. Vanilla + nutstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together638 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 whites and yolks provide the structure that lets the sponge rise and stay light.
Flour
Forms the set crumb structure once heat sets the egg-based batter.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the yolks whip into a stable, light foam.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, helping the cake rise and turn airy.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiffly beaten whites hold the air that makes the sponge light. Adding flour and whites alternately, gently, keeps that air from deflating, so the cake rises well.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Macadamia nutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, flour, vanilla. 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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