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Dessert

Snow-cake

A light, lemon-flavored cake made with flour, sugar, butter, and egg, baked at 300°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Snow-cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Add the beaten egg and mix well.

  3. Incorporate the flour, sugar, and lemon juice; mix until combined.

  4. Add another egg, then beat for 30 minutes until the mixture turns white and light.

Bake

  1. Line a flat baking pan with buttered parchment paper.

  2. Pour the batter into the pan.

  3. Place the pan in a 300°F (150°C) oven.

  4. Bake for 1 to 1.5 hours without allowing it to brown.

Cool and serve

  1. Let the cake cool for a few minutes.

  2. Cut the cake into small squares.

  3. Transfer the pieces to a large flat dish.

  4. Cool the pieces completely before storing.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the cake its structure.
Unsalted butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the cake and yields a fine, tender crumb.
Egg
Binds the batter and, when beaten, traps air that lightens the texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright aroma that balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Beating the batter for 30 minutes. Long beating traps air in the fat and egg, which makes the cake light and pale. Stopping early leaves a denser, heavier cake.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, 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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