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Dessert

Snow Cake

A light cake made from sugar, flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, salt, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Snow 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

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

  2. Combine sugar, flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt in a bowl, then beat the mixture well.

Make and fold the batter

  1. Beat the egg whites in a separate bowl until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gently fold the egg whites into the sugar mixture, stirring quickly and minimally.

  3. Pour the batter into sponge cake molds.

Bake

  1. Bake until golden and a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

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

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

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air that lifts and gives the cake its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites while they are beaten.
Flour
Provides the starch and protein that set the batter into the cake's crumb structure.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the egg whites, helping them whip to a more stable foam that holds its shape.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to release gas, helping the cake rise.

The step that matters

Folding the egg whites into the sugar mixture. Overmixing knocks air out of the whipped whites, so the cake rises less and turns dense. Fold gently and only until just combined to keep the foam intact.

“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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