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Dessert

White Mountain Jelly Cake

A butter, sugar, flour, milk, eggs, baking soda, and cream of tartar cake with a whipped egg white frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

White Mountain Jelly 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 large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  3. Add the flour, milk, eggs, cream of tartar, and baking soda; mix until well combined.

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

Make the frosting and assemble

  1. For the frosting, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gradually add the powdered sugar until smooth.

  2. Spread the frosting between the layers of the cooled 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter bind and set.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they give the frosting its light, airy body.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to lift the cake as it bakes.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter and works with baking soda to help the cake rise.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites must be whipped until stiff before the powdered sugar is added. Under-whipped whites give a loose, runny frosting, while over-whipped whites turn grainy and dry. Adding the sugar gradually keeps the foam stable.

“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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