Skip to main content
Dessert

White Mountain Cake

A sweet cake made with sugar, butter, flour, sweet milk, baking soda, cream of tartar, egg whites, lemon flavoring, and optional coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

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 cake

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

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the flour, sweet milk, baking soda, cream of tartar, and egg whites, then mix well.

  4. Flavor the batter with lemon.

  5. Pour into square tin pans.

  6. Bake until golden and a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the frosting and assemble

  1. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth for the frosting.

  2. Gradually add the powdered sugar and lemon flavoring, beating until stiff.

  3. Spread the frosting between the layers and on top of the cake.

  4. Stir in desiccated coconut into the frosting for a variation.

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

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

  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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Egg whites
Provide structure and lift when beaten, helping the cake set and hold its shape.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake once its proteins set in the oven.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the beaten egg whites and works with baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the batter to produce gas that lifts the cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender, golden crust when baked.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites for the frosting. Egg whites must be beaten to a stiff, stable foam; underbeaten whites stay runny and the frosting will not hold, while the sugar should be added gradually so it dissolves and the foam does not collapse.

Swap the coconut

The recipe marks coconut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, flour, milk, cream, egg, lemon):

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

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

More white mountain cake recipes

Philadelphia 3 See all 115 →

You might also like

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