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Dessert

Gold and Silver Cake

A layered cake with silver and gold parts made from sugar, butter, sweet milk, eggs, flour, baking powder, allspice, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Gold and 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.

Make the silver batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the sweet milk and flour, then fold in the beaten egg whites.

Make the gold batter

  1. For the Gold Part, cream together 1 cup of sugar and ¾ cup of butter.

  2. Mix in ½ cup of sweet milk, 1½ teaspoons of baking powder, and 1½ cups of flour.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks, allspice, and cinnamon to taste.

Bake

  1. Layer the Silver and Gold mixtures in a prepared cake pan.

  2. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

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. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Whites beaten in add lift and an airy, light crumb; yolks add richness and golden colour.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavour.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and, creamed with butter, helps give a fine texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air that gives the cake its lift. Stirring them in too hard or too long deflates the foam, leaving a denser cake.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, milk, egg, flour, cinnamon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicethe original
  4. Clovefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, egg, flour, cinnamon. 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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