Skip to main content
Dessert

Snow-drift Cake

A light cake made with butter, egg whites, sugar, sweet milk, baking soda, flour, cream of tartar, almond extract, and frosted with desiccated coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Almond and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,093 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Snow-drift Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Beat the butter until creamy.

  3. Add the beaten egg whites and sugar, mixing well.

  4. Stir in the sweet milk with dissolved baking soda.

  5. Gradually add the flour and cream of tartar, mixing until smooth.

  6. Flavor with almond extract.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake until golden.

  2. Frost the cake and sprinkle with desiccated coconut.

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. Almond + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 to trap air, giving the cake a light, airy structure.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the batter to help it rise.
Cream of tartar
Acid that stabilizes the egg whites and helps the cake rise.

The step that matters

Gradually add the flour and cream of tartar, mixing until smooth. Overmixing once flour is added develops gluten, which toughens the cake and can make it dense. Mix only until the batter is smooth.

Swap the coconut

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

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

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

Almond Sponge CakeAlmond Sponge Cake26 recipesAlmond CustardAlmond Custard22 recipesAlmond WafersAlmond Wafers22 recipesCoconut Almond CakeCoconut Almond Cake17 recipes