Skip to main content
Dessert

Snow Cake

A light, airy cake made with butter, sugar, arrowroot, egg whites, and flavored with almond, vanilla, or lemon essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Arrowroot and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 179 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Snow Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Gradually stir in the sugar and arrowroot while continuing to beat the mixture.

  3. Whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold them into the mixture.

  4. Beat all ingredients together for 20 minutes.

  5. Flavor with your choice of essence.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a buttered mold or lined tin.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 hours.

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. Arrowroot + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together179 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with the sugar to add richness and a tender crumb.
White sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps hold air when beaten into the butter.
Arrowroot
Provides a light, starchy structure that gives the cake its delicate, snowy crumb.
Egg whites
Whisked to stiff peaks to trap air, giving the cake its lift and light texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whisked whites hold air that makes the cake rise. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air from collapsing and keeps the batter light.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Sweet potatofits about as well
  2. Arrowrootthe original
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, almond. 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.

You might also like

Arrowroot PuddingArrowroot Pudding46 recipesAlmond Sponge CakeAlmond Sponge Cake26 recipesAlmond CustardAlmond Custard22 recipesAlmond WafersAlmond Wafers22 recipes