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Dessert

Maple Snow Cake

A sweet cake made with sugar, butter, flour, eggs, baking powder, maple syrup, marshmallows, and coconut topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and coconut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Maple Snow 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.

Make the batter

  1. In a mixing bowl, beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Gradually add the sugar, then the beaten egg yolks until thick and lemon-colored.

  3. Sift the flour and alternate adding it with the lukewarm water to the mixture.

  4. Beat thoroughly, then fold in the beaten egg whites and baking powder.

  5. Pour the batter into an oblong cake pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, cook the maple syrup and ¼ cup butter until it forms a soft ball in cold water.

  2. Just before it's done, melt the marshmallows with 4 tablespoons of water over hot water.

  3. Beat the melted marshmallows into the syrup mixture until cool and stiff.

Assemble

  1. Spread the filling over the cake and cover thickly with grated coconut.

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 + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + maple syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,252 recipes

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

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

Eggs
Yolks enrich and thicken the creamed mixture, and whites folded in add lift and airiness.
Pastry flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender crumb when creamed with butter.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture in both the cake and the filling.
Marshmallows
Melted and beaten into the syrup, they help the filling become cool, stiff, and spreadable.

The step that matters

Cooking the maple syrup to a soft ball. Sugar syrup must reach the right concentration to set into a soft, stable filling. Undercooked syrup stays runny, while overcooked syrup turns hard and grainy once cooled.

Swap the coconut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, flour, egg, maple syrup):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Pumpkinfits better
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, flour, egg, maple syrup. 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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