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Dessert

Silver and Gold Layer Cake

A two-layer cake with a silver base and a gold middle layer made with figs, cinnamon, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and fig match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 614 recipes. Both carry cinnamyl acetate, which smells sweet aromatic, cinnamon. The science ↓

Silver and Gold Layer 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 silver batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar for the silver part. Add the milk and mix well.

  3. Sift the baking powder with the flour and add the sifted mixture to the batter.

  4. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  5. Pour the batter into two layer cake tins.

  6. Bake until golden.

Make the gold batter

  1. For the gold part, cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the beaten egg, milk, and sifted flour mixed with baking powder and cinnamon.

  3. Place half of this mixture in a pan.

  4. Layer the pan with chopped, floured figs.

  5. Top with the remaining dough.

  6. Bake until done.

Assemble the cake

  1. While warm, layer the cakes with boiled icing thickened with coconut.

  2. Place the gold layer between the two silver layers.

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. Cinnamon + figtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together614 recipes

    Shared aroma: cinnamyl acetate (sweet aromatic, cinnamon).

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

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

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + figtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped whites give the silver layers lift, and the yolks and egg add richness and structure.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the cake layers their structure.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the layers rise and turn light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep the crumb tender and moist.
Figs
Add moisture and natural sweetness to the gold layer.

The step that matters

Folding in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air in the whites. Stirring hard knocks that air out, so the layers bake up flatter and denser.

Swap the fig

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figthe original
  4. Blueberryfits about as well

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