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Dessert

Silver Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, and cream or sweet milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. 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.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. In a large bowl, beat the egg yolks with the sugar until well combined.

  3. Stir in the softened butter and mix until smooth.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in a small amount of the cream or milk.

  5. Sift the cream of tartar with 1 cup of the flour, then add to the mixture.

  6. Gradually mix in the remaining flour until fully incorporated.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a deep loaf 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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 yolks
Add richness and structure as they set during baking.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness, giving the cake a smooth, rich crumb.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the batter and helps keep the cake light and white.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the batter to help the cake rise.

The step that matters

Bake until a toothpick comes out clean. Baking soda and cream of tartar start lifting the batter as soon as it is mixed, so the batter should go into the oven without delay. Pull the cake once a toothpick in the center comes out clean, since an underbaked center will sink and collapse.

“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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