Name: White Mountain Cake
Ingredients: 2½ cups sugar; ½ cup boiling water; 3 egg whites; grated coconut

Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

White Mountain Cake

Ingredients

2½ cups sugar
½ cup boiling water
3 egg whites
grated coconut

Directions

Prepare a filling by boiling 2½ cups sugar and ½ cup boiling water slowly until it becomes a thick syrup.
Test the syrup by dropping a little into cold water; do not stir constantly while cooking.
Once cooked, remove from heat and stir in the well-beaten whites of 3 eggs, stirring occasionally while cooling.
While still warm, spread the filling over each layer of cake and sprinkle grated coconut on top.
Stack the cake layers on top of each other, covering the top with the remaining mixture and more 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.

Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar + coconuttop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,742 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Egg + coconuttop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,090 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).