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Dessert

Snow-cake

A sweet dessert made with butter, sugar, arrowroot, egg whites, and flavoring, baked until firm.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 179 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Snow-cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Gradually stir in the sugar and arrowroot while beating the mixture.

  3. Whisk the egg whites until stiff, then fold them into the mixture and beat well for 20 minutes.

  4. Add your preferred flavoring and pour the batter into a buttered mold or tin.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1 to 1.5 hours.

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. Arrowroot + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together179 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Arrowroot
Provides a light, fine starch structure that keeps the cake tender rather than dense.
Butter
Creamed with the sugar to trap air and add richness and moist texture.
Eggs whites
Whipped to stiff peaks to give the cake its airy, rising lift.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the creamed butter hold air during beating.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Stiff whites hold the air that lifts the cake. Folding them in gently, then beating as directed, keeps that air in the batter so the cake rises evenly rather than collapsing or turning heavy.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Sweet potatofits about as well
  2. Arrowrootthe original
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Chivefits about as well

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