Skip to main content
Dessert

Sponge Cake

A moist sponge cake made with sponge bread, butter, lard, eggs, sugar, spices, raisins, and nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in hot water.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the sponge bread, sugar, and butter-lard mixture.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, dissolved baking soda, and cold coffee; mix well.

  3. In another bowl, combine the flour, raisins, nuts, baking powder, cloves, cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg.

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

  5. Pour the batter into a greased loaf pan or layer cake pans.

Bake

  1. Bake for 30–40 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Coffee + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together105 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Raisin + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the cake's crumb together.
Butter and lard mixed
Adds fat for tenderness and a moist, rich crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic ingredients to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Baking powder
Provides additional lift so the batter rises evenly in the oven.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Adding flour in stages and stirring only until combined keeps gluten development limited, so the cake stays tender rather than tough.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sugar, butter, egg, coffee, flour, raisin):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, butter, egg, coffee, flour, raisin. 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.

More sponge cake recipes

Lemon 108White 98Cream 70Pudding 58Plain 48Velvet 40 See all 880 →

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesCoffee Ice CreamCoffee Ice Cream91 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipes