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Dessert

Snowball Cake

A light almond-flavored cake made with sugar, butter, milk, flour, egg whites, baking powder, and almond flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Snowball 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.

Prepare the batter

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

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

  3. Add the milk and mix well.

  4. Gradually stir in the flour, baking powder, and almond flavoring.

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

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the batter into a square pan and bake until golden.

  2. Once cooled, ice the cake and decorate with candied cherries at regular intervals.

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 + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (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

Egg whites
Beaten to stiff peaks, they trap air and give the cake its light, airy structure.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake once it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the cake rise and become tender.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to add fat, richness and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Creamed with butter for sweetness and to help build a soft texture.
Milk
Adds moisture to the batter, hydrating the flour and dissolving the sugar.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stiff whites hold the air that lifts the cake. Stirring them in vigorously knocks that air out, so fold gently until just combined to keep the cake light.

“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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