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Dessert

Silver Cake

A light, airy cake made with butter, sugar, flour, egg whites, sweet milk, and baking powder, topped with a butter and powdered sugar icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 the cake

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

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

  3. Add the flour and baking powder, mixing well.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  5. Fold the egg whites into the batter gently.

  6. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the icing

  1. For the icing, boil the butter and powdered sugar until it drops from the spoon.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then pour the hot mixture over them, beating until stiff.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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
Adds richness and tenderness, and carries flavor through the batter and icing.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it stay tender and browned while creaming air into the batter.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air that lightens the cake and sets the icing.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.

The step that matters

Folding the egg whites into the batter. Whipped egg whites hold air that gives the cake its lift. Stirring them in vigorously knocks that air out, so fold gently with a spatula until just combined.

“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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