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Dessert

Silver Cake

A light, airy cake made with egg whites, sugar, flour, butter, milk, 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 ↓

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

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

Make the batter

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

  2. Add the milk and mix well.

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

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

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

  6. Dissolve the baking soda in a little boiling water and add it to the mixture.

Bake

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

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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add lift and an airy, light crumb to the cake.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds richness and a tender texture to the crumb.
Sugar
Creamed with butter, it sweetens the cake and helps give it a fine, even texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the whipped egg whites and adds a slight tang to the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.

The step that matters

Fold the whipped egg whites into the batter. Whites beaten to stiff peaks trap air that gives the cake its lift. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air in the batter so the cake rises well instead of turning dense.

“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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