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Dessert

White Mountain Cake

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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.

Prepare

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

Make the cake

  1. Cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the sweet milk, cornstarch, flour, egg whites, vanilla, and baking powder. Mix until smooth.

  3. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the frosting and assemble

  1. For the frosting, beat the egg whites until soft peaks form, then gradually add sifted sugar and vanilla, beating until very light.

  2. 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, fluffy crumb and rich flavour.
Egg whites
Whipped for the frosting to give it volume and a light, airy texture; also add structure to the cake batter.
Cornstarch
Tenderises the crumb, giving the cake a fine, soft texture lighter than flour alone.
Flour
Provides the main structure of the cake as it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and become airy.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender, fine crumb when creamed with butter.

The step that matters

Beating the frosting egg whites. Egg whites must be whipped to soft peaks and sugar added gradually so they hold air and form a stable, light frosting. Under-beaten or overmixed whites can collapse or turn grainy.

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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