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Dessert

White Cake

A light cake made with powdered sugar, flour, baking powder, sweet milk, egg whites, almond extract and coconut, topped with powdered sugar and chocolate icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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White Cake

Why it works: Almond and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,093 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

White 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 batter

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the powdered sugar, flour, and baking powder.

  3. Add the sweet milk and the whites of the eggs, and mix until smooth.

  4. Flavor the batter with almond extract.

Bake and fill

  1. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake until golden.

  2. For the filling, spread grated coconut mixed with sugar between the layers.

Make the icing

  1. To make icing, combine 1 cup powdered sugar, the whites of 2 eggs, and enough dissolved chocolate to achieve a rich dark color.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Almond + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Almond + chocolatetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,733 recipes

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

  4. Coconut + chocolatetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the starch structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, making the batter rise and become light.
Eggs
Whites add structure and lift to the batter, helping it set and hold air.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the cake and contributes to a fine, tender crumb and smooth texture.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour so the batter forms a smooth mixture.

Swap the coconut

The recipe marks coconut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, flour, milk, egg, almond, chocolate):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, milk, egg, almond, chocolate. 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.

More white cake recipes

Egg 9Icing 8Plain 6Warsaw 5Almond 3Coconut 3 See all 331 →

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