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Dessert

White Mountain Cream

A light, spreadable frosting made from sugar syrup and egg white, flavored with vanilla or lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

White Mountain Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar and boiling water, stirring to prevent sugar from sticking.

  2. Heat gradually to boiling without stirring until syrup threads when dropped from a spoon.

Make and finish the frosting

  1. Pour syrup gradually over beaten egg white while constantly beating the mixture.

  2. Continue beating until the frosting reaches a spreadable consistency.

  3. Add flavoring and pour over the cake, spreading evenly with the back of a spoon.

  4. Let it set as soon as it firms up.

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

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

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

Sugar
Dissolves into the boiling water to form the syrup that gives the frosting its sweetness and body.
Egg white
Whipped with the hot syrup to form a foam that sets into a light, airy frosting.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and helps keep the frosting stable when used instead of vanilla.

The step that matters

Pouring the syrup over the egg white. The syrup must be hot and poured slowly while beating constantly. Hot syrup cooks the egg white as it whips, and pouring too fast can deflate the foam or leave the frosting grainy and uneven.

“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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