Thin coating put on gold table (7)
I believe the answer is:
plateau
'table' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'thin coating put on gold' is the wordplay.
'thin coating put' becomes 'plate' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'on' means one lot of letters go next to another (in a down clue, letters appear on others).
'gold' becomes 'Au' (Au is the chemical symbol for gold).
'plate'+'au'='PLATEAU'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for plateau that I've seen before include "High flattish area" , "Table" , "Area of livel high ground" , "Paul, eat! (anag)" , "hat" .)