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Dessert

White Mountain Cake

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

White Mountain 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 cake batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the powdered sugar and softened butter.

  3. Add the sweet milk and mix well.

  4. Sift the flour with the baking powder and gradually add to the mixture.

  5. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then fold them into the batter.

Bake and ice

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

  2. For the icing, boil the water and sugar until it reaches a string consistency.

  3. Slowly pour the hot syrup over the beaten egg whites, beating until cool.

  4. Assemble the cake layers with icing in between and sprinkle grated coconut on top.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they lighten the batter and give the cake an airy structure.
Butter
Creamed with the sugar, it adds fat and tenderness to the crumb.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the cake rise.
Powdered sugar
Creamed with the butter, it sweetens the batter and helps create a fine texture.

The step that matters

Slowly pour the hot syrup over the beaten egg whites. Pouring the syrup in a thin, steady stream while beating keeps the hot sugar from scrambling the egg whites and lets them cook into a smooth, stable icing as they cool.

Swap the coconut

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

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

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