Skip to main content
Dessert

Gold and Silver Cake

A two-layer cake with a gold batter made from yolks and a silver batter made from whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Vanilla and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,961 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. 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. 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.

Make the gold batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the egg yolks and butter until smooth.

  3. Add sugar, flour, sour milk, baking soda, cornstarch, lemon, and vanilla. Mix well.

Make the silver batter

  1. In another bowl, cream together the sugar and butter for the silver part.

  2. Add flour, sour milk, baking soda, cornstarch, and egg whites. Mix until smooth.

Bake

  1. In a prepared pan, alternate spoonfuls of the gold and silver batter.

  2. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick 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. Vanilla + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 tenderness, and help bind the gold batter.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda and adds moisture and tang.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour milk to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Egg whites
Whipped structure traps air in the silver batter, giving a lighter texture.

The step that matters

Mixing the batters after adding flour. Once flour is added, mix only until smooth. Overmixing develops gluten, which makes the cake tough and dense instead of tender.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes