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Dessert

Silver Cake

A light, almond-flavored cake made with butter, powdered sugar, egg whites, milk, flour, baking powder, and almond extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and powdered sugar together.

  2. Sift the flour with the baking powder.

  3. Add the milk and flour alternately to the butter and sugar mixture in small quantities.

  4. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites while stirring rapidly.

  5. Add the almond extract and mix well.

Bake and ice

  1. Pour the batter into a square baking pan or a long narrow loaf pan.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 30 minutes.

  3. Ice the cake before it cools.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the cake and softens its texture when creamed with butter.
Egg whites
Beaten whites trap air that lifts the batter and give the cake its light structure.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it blends smoothly.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Beaten egg whites hold air that makes the cake rise and stay light. Stirring them in vigorously or overmixing deflates that foam, leaving a denser, heavier cake.

“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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