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Dessert

Silver Cake

A light, fragrant cake made with egg whites, butter, sugar, flour, lemon, rose, sherry, and sliced citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Silver Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dredge the citron in 1 tablespoon of the weighed flour.

  2. Set the flour and baking powder in a pan of hot water and stir occasionally.

  3. In two bowls, place the egg whites with 1 tablespoon of sugar in each and beat to stiff foam.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light, then mix in half of the flour.

  2. Add half of the beaten egg whites, then the remaining flour and egg whites.

  3. Stir in the lemon extract, rose extract, and sherry wine, then fold in the citron.

Bake

  1. Quickly pour the batter into a buttered cake pan and bake for 1 hour.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + rosetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,174 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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
Beaten to a stiff foam, they lighten the batter and give the cake its airy structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds richness and a tender texture to the crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the heat of the oven, helping the cake rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the creamed butter become light and airy.
Citron
Dredged in flour so it stays suspended, adding bits of candied fruit flavor and chew.

The step that matters

Quickly pour the batter into the pan. Once the baking powder is mixed in and the egg whites are folded into the batter, its rising gas starts to escape and the foam begins to deflate. Delay lets the batter lose lift, so the cake may bake up dense.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, sugar, flour, rose, sherry, wine):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, sugar, flour, rose, sherry, wine. 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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