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Dessert

Treacle Sponge

A steamed sponge cake made with bread crumbs, suet, egg, baking powder, and topped with golden syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Treacle Sponge

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine bread crumbs, suet, salt, egg, and baking powder. Mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased steaming dish.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for about 1 hour until cooked through.

  2. Once done, pour golden syrup over the sponge as a sauce before serving.

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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Egg + syruptop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,995 recipes
  3. Bread + syruptop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together178 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg
Binds the crumbs and suet together and adds structure to the sponge.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it heats, helping the sponge rise and turn light.
Bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the sponge and give it a soft, absorbent body.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the sponge moist and tender as it steams.
Golden syrup
Adds sweetness and a rich, moist flavour as a sauce over the sponge.

The step that matters

Steaming the sponge. Steam gently and keep the water topping up so the sponge cooks through evenly. Too little heat or water leaves the centre dense and underbaked, while the baking powder needs steady heat to lift the batter.

“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 treacle sponge recipes

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