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Dessert

Sponge Pudding

A light, airy cake made from eggs, sugar, flour, baking powder, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Sponge Pudding

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. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until light and fluffy.

  2. Sift together the flour and baking powder, then gradually add to the egg mixture.

  3. Pour in the boiling water and mix until smooth.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. Serve warm with sauce.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Provide structure and trapped air that lifts the batter as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the sponge and helps hold air when beaten with the eggs.
Flour
Forms the main structure that sets as the pudding bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the pudding rises and becomes light.
Boiling water
Adds moisture and helps loosen the batter into a smooth mixture.

The step that matters

Beating the eggs and sugar until light and fluffy. Beaten eggs and sugar trap air bubbles that expand in the oven and give the sponge its lift. Under-beaten eggs produce a dense, heavy pudding.

“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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