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Dessert

Silver Cake

A light cake with chocolate frosting made from sugar, flour, butter, milk, baking soda, cream of tartar, egg whites, and chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Silver 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 the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter. Add the milk and mix well.

  3. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture.

  5. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form and fold them into the batter.

Bake and frost

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 25-30 minutes.

  2. For the frosting, boil the brown sugar, grated chocolate, and water until thick.

  3. Spread the frosting on the cake while it is still hot.

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. Cream + chocolatetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

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

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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air that gives the cake its light, open structure.
Flour
Its proteins form the gluten network that gives the cake its structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown while creaming holds air in the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to release gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter, stabilizing the whipped egg whites and activating the baking soda.

The step that matters

Fold the egg whites into the batter. Folding gently keeps the air in the whipped egg whites. Stirring or deflating them makes the cake dense and flat instead of light.

“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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