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Dessert

Snowball, Cake

A sweet cake made with sugar, butter, milk, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, egg whites, and frosted with a lemon‑sugar glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Snowball, Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cake

  1. Cream one cup sugar and one-half cup butter.

  2. Add one-half cup milk, two cups flour, one-half teaspoon soda, and one teaspoon cream of tartar.

  3. Then add the whites of three eggs, beaten stiff.

  4. Bake in a sheet.

Make the frosting

  1. Frosting: Two cups sugar and two-thirds of a cup of milk; boil ten minutes.

  2. Add a little lemon, and beat until cold.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

884Calories
28 gProtein
31 gFat
121 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 6 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Cream1 tbsp (15ml) heavy51
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

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. See the original page.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  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

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Eggs
Beaten whites trap air, giving the cake lift and a light texture.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it soft and moist.
Soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to produce gas that makes the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Provides acid that reacts with the soda, helping the cake rise and stabilising the whites.

The step that matters

Beat the frosting until cold. Boiled sugar syrup must be beaten while it cools so that small sugar crystals form, giving a smooth, spreadable frosting rather than a runny or grainy one.

“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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