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Dessert

Silver Cake Pudding

A baked cake pudding made with flour, butter, sugar, milk, egg whites, vanilla, baking soda, cream of tartar, and a lemon‑wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Silver Cake Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the cake batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Cream the sugar and butter together in a large bowl.

  3. Add the milk and flour alternately to the mixture.

  4. Beat the egg whites until frothy and gently fold them into the batter.

  5. Add vanilla extract to taste.

  6. Just before baking, mix in the baking soda and cream of tartar with enough milk to combine.

Bake and make the sauce

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish and bake for nearly 1 hour.

  2. For the sauce, cream together the butter and sugar in a saucepan.

  3. Add the egg yolks, lemon juice, lemon rind, and wine, mixing well.

  4. Stir the sauce over low heat until it comes to a boil.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eggs
Whites trapped by beating give the cake its light, airy structure when folded into the batter.
All-purpose flour
Flour provides the structure that sets the batter as it bakes.
Butter
Creaming butter with sugar traps air and adds richness and a tender crumb.
Granulated sugar
Sugar sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps give it a fine texture.
Baking soda
Reacting with cream of tartar, it releases gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidic, it reacts with baking soda to lift the batter and stabilize the whipped whites.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda and cream of tartar. These leaveners must be mixed in just before baking so their gas is trapped in the batter instead of escaping before the cake reaches the oven.

“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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