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Baking

White Sponge Cake

A light, airy cake made from beaten egg whites, sugar, flour, cornstarch, vanilla, lemon juice, baked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

White Sponge Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Sift the sugar five times.

  2. Mix and sift the flour, cornstarch, cream of tartar, and salt together five times.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg whites until foamy but not stiff.

  2. Slowly sift in the sugar while continuously beating.

  3. Add the vanilla and lemon juice.

  4. Gradually fold in the flour mixture using a light motion.

  5. Pour the batter into an unbuttered tube pan.

Bake and cool

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 1 hour, without opening the oven door for the first 20 minutes.

  2. Remove the cake from the oven and invert it onto a cake cooler to cool completely in the pan.

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

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vanilla + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  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

Egg whites
Trapped air in the foam gives the cake its light, airy structure.
Flour
Provides the protein and starch that set the cake's crumb once baked.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps stabilise the whipped egg white foam.
Cream of tartar
Acidity helps stabilise the egg white foam so it holds its volume.
Cornstarch
Softens the flour's protein, giving a more tender, delicate crumb.

The step that matters

Folding in the flour mixture. Folding gently with a light motion preserves the air whipped into the egg whites. Stirring or deflating the foam leads to a dense, heavy cake.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Blueberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, sugar, 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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