Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/White cake

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep‎. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 07:52, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

White cake

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Non-notable cake that does not pass WP:GNG, references consist of recipes and trivial mentions. WP:BEFORE check yielded no sources that show WP:SIGCOV. This should be turned into a redirect to cake, which should include a sentence stating "White cake, named after the color of the crumb, is made without using egg yolks". BaduFerreira (talk) 13:06, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Food and drink-related deletion discussions. BaduFerreira (talk) 13:06, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 07:15, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. There's more cultural content for this subject than just a description of the contents. White cake, sometimes also called silver cake, isn't just a yolkless yellow cake. From the historical viewpoint, it required not just a willingness to omit the egg yolks (which could be used in other dishes), but also having access to plenty of butter, refined wheat flour, and refined white sugar, which meant that it started off as a luxury and a status symbol (ISBN 9780199313396, "Wedding cake" by Carol Wilson). Just having pure white icing was an expensive status symbol in the 17th century; having a white cake under that icing was basically never done. Properly speaking, the modern white cakes – a butter-based layer cake – didn't exist until the latter part of the 19th century (ISBN 9780199734962, "Wedding" by Wendy A. Woloson), because before the baking powder revolution (latter third of the 19th century), producing a white cake would have been a technical triumph. The almond-based lady cake (from the 1830s) also omitted egg yolks and was the closest you could realistically get before then (ISBN 9780199313396, "Celebration cakes" by Stephen Schmidt), unless you wanted to risk a tough "white sponge" (ISBN 9780199734962, "Cake" by Sally Parham; that white sponge eventually developed into the modern angel food cake). On the cultural side, they became associated with weddings and with christenings. By the early-to-mid 20th century, the modern white butter cake had supplanted the traditional fruitcake at weddings (Queen Victoria had a fruit cake at her wedding; only the icing was white), and by the end of the century, for non-wedding celebrations, chocolate was more popular (ibid). Box mixes for white cakes were introduced around 1930 (ISBN 9780199313396, "Cake mix" by Laura Shapiro). Additionally, as white cake is used as a building block, there could be a fairly long section on variations or cake styles that are white layers with something added, e.g., Lady Baltimore cake. So there you are: with a couple of articles from two high-quality books from Oxford University Press, and you can re-write the whole article now. There are also some academic articles about white cakes, but their usefulness for an encyclopedia article is mostly not obvious to me (e.g., "White layer cake batter emulsion characteristics" or "Gelatinization of starch and white layer cake quality", though "Better White Layer Cakes Ahead?" may have nutritional information). If you were to go looking for particular content that is unique to white cake, I'd suggest looking into the difficulty of making a really good white cake with gluten-free flour substitutes. Chocolate, fruit, or spice are trivial to convert, and yellow's not too difficult, but a white cake is hard to get right, without any unwanted flavors shining through. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:12, 12 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Another classic baking technique. Maybe this source will help: What's The Difference Between Yellow, White, and Vanilla Cake?. The Banner talk 15:56, 12 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Classic cake, possibly the most widely-known of modern cakes. Valereee (talk) 18:51, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.