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Dessert

White Mountain Cream

A light, airy cream made by pouring boiled sugar syrup into beaten egg white, flavored with vanilla and lemon, served over cake.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

White Mountain Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil sugar and water in a saucepan until it spins a thread 2 inches long or forms a soft ball in cold water.

Finish and serve

  1. Gradually pour the syrup into the beaten egg white while beating constantly until it reaches the right consistency to spread.

  2. Add vanilla and lemon juice.

  3. Pour over 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. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  2. Vanilla + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

Vanilla and sugar 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

Sugar
Forms the syrup that sets into a sweet, spreadable frosting.
Egg white
Its proteins whip into a foam that gives the frosting body and lightness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the flavour.

The step that matters

Pouring the syrup into the egg white. The syrup must be hot and poured slowly while beating constantly. Pouring too fast or letting the mixture stop moving can cook or deflate the foam, leaving the frosting thin or grainy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vanilla, sugar, egg):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Blueberryfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vanilla, sugar, egg. 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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