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Dessert

White Mountain Cake

A light coconut-flavored cake with a frosted coconut topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 306 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange 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 batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter.

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

  4. Sift together the flour, corn starch, and baking powder; fold into the mixture.

  5. Pour the batter into jelly‑cake tins and bake until golden.

Frost and assemble

  1. For the frosting, beat the whites of 3 eggs with some sugar until slightly thick.

  2. Spread the frosting over the cooled cake, add grated coconut, and layer the cakes.

  3. Top with additional coconut or frosting.

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. Corn + coconuttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together306 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  3. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

  4. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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 trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Egg whites
Add structure and lift to the batter, and whipped into the frosting they give it a light, set texture.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Corn starch
Softens the flour's gluten, producing a finer, more tender crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps give it a light texture.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites for the frosting. Whites must be beaten only until slightly thick; over-beating makes them dry and grainy, and any trace of yolk or fat stops them whipping and weakens the frosting's foam.

Swap the coconut

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

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

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