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Dessert

Silver Cake

A light, lemon-flavored cake made with butter, sugar, milk, flour, corn starch, baking powder, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the sweet milk and mix well.

  3. Sift together the flour, corn starch, and baking powder, then add to the mixture.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  5. Add lemon flavoring to taste.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown, but do not burn.

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. Coffee + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 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 whites
Whipped to a stiff froth, they trap air that lightens the cake's crumb.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to add tenderness and a rich flavor.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises.
Corn starch
Softens the crumb, giving a finer, more tender texture than flour alone.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Egg whites hold air only while they are whipped. Vigorous stirring deflates them, so the cake rises less and turns out denser.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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