Skip to main content
Dessert

Snow Cake

A light, lemon-flavored cake made with arrowroot or cornflour, sugar, butter, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Arrowroot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 553 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 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Add the beaten egg and mix well.

  3. Incorporate the remaining ingredients.

  4. If the mixture is not light, add another egg and beat for 15 minutes until light and white.

Bake and serve

  1. Line a flat tin with buttered paper and pour in the batter.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 1 to 1½ hours without browning.

  3. Let cool for a few minutes, then cut into small squares and transfer to a dish to cool completely.

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 + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  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 + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Arrowroot or cornflour
Provides the light, tender structure of the cake without gluten.
White sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it moist and tender.
Unsalted butter
Adds fat for a soft, rich crumb and a delicate flavour.
Egg
Adds structure and lift when beaten, helping the cake set light and white.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the cake.

The step that matters

Beating the mixture until light and white. Beating incorporates air into the butter, sugar and egg, and this trapped air is what makes the cake rise and turn pale. An under-beaten mixture stays dense, which is why the recipe calls for another egg and 15 minutes of beating if it is not light.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Arrowrootthe original

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes