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Dessert

Rocky Mountain Cake

A fruit cake with coconut, raisins, citron, almonds, dates, figs, currants, and icing made from egg whites and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rocky 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 the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the sweet milk and egg whites, mixing well.

  4. Sift together the flour and baking powder, then gradually add to the mixture.

  5. Divide the batter into three deep layer cake pans and bake until golden.

Prepare the fruit

  1. Prepare the fruit by grating the coconut and chopping the raisins, citron, almonds, dates, figs, and currants.

Ice and decorate

  1. For the icing, beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add the sugar until smooth.

  2. Spread the icing over the cooled cake layers and decorate with the prepared fruit.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Coconut + almondtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavor.
Egg whites
Add structure and moisture to the batter and whip into a stiff, glossy icing.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake layers as the batter sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the layers rise and become light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender texture when creamed with butter.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites for the icing. Egg whites must be beaten until stiff before the sugar is added. Under-whipped whites stay runny and won't hold the icing, while the sugar added gradually helps keep the foam stable and smooth.

Swap the coconut

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

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

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

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