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Dessert

White Mountain Cake

A light, airy cake made with sugar, batter, sweet milk, corn starch, flour, egg whites, vanilla, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple 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 cake

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

  2. In a bowl, combine sugar, batter, sweet milk, corn starch, flour, egg whites, vanilla, and baking powder, then mix until well combined.

  3. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake until golden.

Make the frosting

  1. For the frosting, beat 5 egg whites until light, then gradually add sifted sugar and a little vanilla.

Assemble

  1. Spread the frosting between the layers and on the outside of the 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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Egg whites
Add structure and lift to the cake and whip into a light, airy frosting.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Corn starch
Softens the flour's gluten, giving the cake a finer, more tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, when whipped with egg whites, stabilizes the frosting.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites for the frosting. Whites must be beaten until light and foamy before sugar is added gradually. Under-beaten whites stay runny, and adding sugar too fast prevents the foam from holding its volume.

“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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