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Dessert

White Mountain Cake

A light cake made with sugar, butter, egg whites, milk, flour, corn starch, baking powder, frosted with beaten egg whites and sugar, topped with coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 306 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

White 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.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter.

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

  4. Gradually add the flour, corn starch, and baking powder, stirring until combined.

Bake and frost

  1. Pour the batter into jelly cake tins and bake until golden.

  2. Beat the egg whites with some sugar until soft peaks form.

  3. Spread the frosting over the cooled cakes, add grated coconut, and layer the cakes.

  4. Top with additional coconut or frosting.

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. Corn + coconuttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together306 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  3. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

  4. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat that creams with sugar, giving the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Egg whites
Provide structure and lift in the batter, and whipped into the frosting they hold its foam.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake once its starch sets in the oven.
Corn starch
Softens the crumb, giving a finer, more tender texture than flour alone.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cakes rise and become light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a fine, even crumb when creamed with butter.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites with sugar until soft peaks form. Under-beaten whites will not hold the frosting's foam, while over-beaten whites turn dry and grainy. Stop when peaks just stand upright and curl slightly at the tip.

Swap the coconut

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

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

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