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Dessert

Rocky Mountain Cake

A fruit and coconut cake baked in three pans, iced with egg white and sugar, topped with fruit and coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rocky 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 the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

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

  4. Sift together the flour and baking powder, then gradually add to the mixture.

  5. Divide the batter into three deep cake pans and bake until golden.

Prepare the fruit

  1. Prepare the fruit by blanching the almonds and grating the coconut.

  2. Chop one-third of the almonds finely and mix with all the fruit and a small portion of the coconut.

Ice and assemble

  1. Once the cakes are cooled, ice both sides of each layer with a thin icing made from 3 egg whites and 2 cups sugar.

  2. Spread the fruit mixture on each layer and sprinkle with coconut.

  3. On the top layer, spread more fruit and decorate with whole almonds, sprinkling generously with 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Coconut + almondtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb.
Egg whites
Add protein that provides structure and helps set the batter as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the layers rise and become light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown while creaming aerates the batter.
Dates
Add moisture and chewy sweetness to the fruit filling.

The step that matters

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beating air into the butter and sugar creates the bubbles that lift the batter. Under-creaming leaves a dense cake, while the baking powder can only do part of the rising.

Swap the coconut

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

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

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

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