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Dessert

White Mountain Cake

A light, airy cake made with sugar, butter, sweet milk, cornstarch, flour, egg whites, vanilla, and baking powder, topped with a fluffy frosting.

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. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the sweet milk, cornstarch, flour, egg whites, vanilla, and baking powder. Mix well.

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

Make the frosting and finish

  1. For the frosting, beat the egg whites until light.

  2. Gradually add the sifted sugar and vanilla, continuing to beat until fluffy.

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Egg whites
Whipped into the batter for lift and structure, and beaten into the frosting for airy volume.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender crumb and richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps create a light texture.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Cornstarch
Softens the crumb, giving a finer, more tender texture than flour alone.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites for the frosting. Egg whites must be beaten until light and fluffy, and sugar added gradually, to build a stable foam. Under-beaten or greasy whites will not hold volume, and the frosting will weep or collapse.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

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