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Dessert

Snow Cake

A light cake made with egg whites, butter, flour, powdered sugar, and baking powder, topped with a powdered sugar icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Snow 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).

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl, then mix in the powdered sugar.

  2. Sift the baking powder with the flour.

  3. Add the sifted mixture to the butter mixture.

  4. Combine all ingredients.

  5. Beat the mixture well.

  6. Divide the batter into two jelly pans.

Bake and make the icing

  1. Bake until golden.

  2. Beat the egg whites for the icing until stiff.

  3. Mix in the powdered sugar for the icing.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Egg whites
Whipped to hold air, giving the cake its light, open structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and add richness and tender texture.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten that set the cake's structure as it bakes.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the cake and dissolves finely into the creamed butter for a smooth crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise in the oven.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Whites must be beaten enough to hold firm peaks so they trap air and lift the cake. Underbeaten whites collapse and give a dense cake, while overbeaten whites turn dry and grainy and lose their ability to blend smoothly into the batter.

“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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