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Dessert

Rocky Mountain Cake

A layered cake with figs, raisins, currants, dates, citron, coconut, and blanched almonds, iced with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 cake

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

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the egg whites and mix well.

  4. Stir in the flour and baking powder, then add the sweet milk.

  5. Pour the batter into three deep jelly tins and bake until golden.

Make the icing

  1. For the icing, boil ½ cup of water with 2 cups of powdered sugar.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then add to the boiling sugar and beat for 3 minutes.

  3. Ice both sides of each cake layer with the icing.

Fill and decorate

  1. Chop the figs, raisins, currants, dates, and citron very fine.

  2. Mix the chopped fruit with a small quantity of coconut.

  3. Spread the fruit mixture between the layers and on top.

  4. Decorate with blanched almonds.

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

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

  3. Fig + raisintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

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

  4. Milk + figtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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 icing for a light, stiff structure and airy texture.
Butter
Creamed with the sugar to add tenderness and richness to the cake crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the layers together.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.
Figs
Add moisture and chewy sweetness to the fruit filling.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff, then add to the boiling sugar and beat for 3 minutes. Hot syrup must be poured into well-whipped whites while beating constantly, so the proteins set into a stable, glossy foam. If the whites are under-whipped or the syrup is not hot enough, the icing will stay loose or collapse.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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