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Dessert

White Mountain Cake

A coconut-topped cake made with sugar, butter, egg whites, sweet milk, flour, corn starch, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 306 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

White Mountain 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.

Make the batter

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

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the beaten egg whites and sweet milk, mixing well.

  4. Sift together the flour, corn starch, and baking powder, then gradually add to the mixture.

  5. Pour the batter into jelly-cake tins and bake until golden.

Frost and assemble

  1. For the frosting, beat the egg whites with some sugar until soft peaks form.

  2. Spread the frosting over the cooled cake, add grated coconut, and layer the cakes.

  3. Top with additional coconut or frosting.

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. Corn + coconuttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together306 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  3. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

  4. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Beaten whites trap air, giving the cake lift and a light, tender crumb.
Butter
Fat coats flour proteins, tenderising the crumb and adding richness.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets as the batter bakes.
Corn starch
Softens the crumb, giving a finer, lighter texture than flour alone.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the cake to rise in the oven.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, promotes browning, and helps stabilise whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites with sugar until soft peaks form. Whites must be beaten enough to hold air for a stable frosting, but overbeating makes them dry, grainy and prone to collapse. Stop once soft peaks hold their shape.

Swap the coconut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, milk, flour, corn. 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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