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Dessert

Silver Cake

A light cake made with butter, sugar, egg whites, milk, baking soda, cream of tartar, and peach kernels.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

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.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the egg whites and mix well.

  3. Stir in the thick milk.

  4. Combine the baking soda and cream of tartar, then add to the mixture.

  5. Fold in the peach kernels.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for 1 hour and 15 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  5. Butter + peachtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together860 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Provide structure and lift, helping the cake hold its airy crumb as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and creaming it with sugar traps air for a tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, fluffy base when creamed with butter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter, reacting with baking soda to produce lift and a lighter crumb.
Thick milk
Adds moisture and tenderness to the batter while contributing to its structure.

The step that matters

Creaming the butter and sugar. Beating butter and sugar until light and fluffy traps air bubbles that expand in the oven. Under-creaming leaves a dense cake, while the leavening reaction needs that trapped air to work well.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Peachthe original

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