Skip to main content
Dessert

White Mountain Jelly Cake

A butter, sugar, flour, milk, and egg cake with a glossy egg white frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

White Mountain Jelly 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. In a large bowl, combine butter and sugar until creamy.

  3. Add flour and milk, mixing well.

  4. In a separate bowl, mix cream of tartar with flour.

  5. In another bowl, mix baking soda with milk.

  6. Combine the two mixtures with the rest of the ingredients, without separating the eggs.

Bake and frost

  1. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake until golden.

  2. For frosting, beat the egg whites until stiff.

  3. Gradually add fine white sugar to the egg whites until glossy.

  4. Spread frosting between layers of the cooled cake.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, creating a tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and binding to the batter, and moisture and richness.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter and stabilizes the egg whites for frosting.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic ingredients to release gas, helping the cake rise.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff and glossy. Under-beaten whites collapse and weep, while over-beaten whites turn dry and grainy. Gradual sugar helps dissolve fully and keeps the foam stable.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes