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Dessert

Snow Cake

A cake with a frosted topping made from powdered sugar, butter, eggs, flour, milk, baking powder, almond and vanilla extracts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,961 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. 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.

Make the cake

  1. Cream together the pulverized sugar and butter.

  2. Add the beaten egg whites and mix well.

  3. Stir in the flour, sweet milk, baking powder, and almond extract.

  4. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

Make and spread the frosting

  1. For the frosting, beat the egg yolks until frothy, then gradually add the pulverized sugar.

  2. Flavor the frosting with vanilla extract and spread it on the cooled cake.

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. Almond + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 whites trap air, helping the cake rise and turn light.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds fat and tenderness to the crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, giving the cake its rise.
Egg yolks
Beaten into the frosting, they add richness and body.

The step that matters

Pour the batter and bake until golden. Baking sets the flour and egg proteins into a firm crumb while the batter rises; underbaking can leave the centre gummy and collapsed, while overbaking dries it out.

“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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