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Dessert

Croton Sponge Cake

A sponge cake made with flour, sugar, butter, milk, eggs, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Croton Sponge Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the batter

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

  2. In a mixing bowl, beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.

  3. Add the eggs, which have been beaten separately, and mix well.

  4. Sift the cream of tartar with the flour and add to the mixture.

  5. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk and stir it in.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared baking pan and bake until golden.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps trap air for a lighter crumb.
Unsalted butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and its creaming holds air in the batter.
Large eggs
Provide structure as they set and add moisture and richness to the crumb.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter and stabilises the leavening reaction with baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to release gas, helping the cake rise.

The step that matters

Stirring in the baking soda dissolved in milk. Baking soda starts releasing gas as soon as it meets acid, so the batter should go into the oven promptly to keep the rise from fading before baking sets the structure.

“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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