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Dessert

Snow Cake

A light, airy cake made from arrowroot, sugar, butter, egg whites, and lemon essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 553 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. 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. Line the sides of a baking tin with buttered paper.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the sugar and butter together until smooth.

  2. Sift in the arrowroot and mix well.

  3. Whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks and gently fold them into the mixture.

  4. Add essence of lemon to taste and whisk the mixture for about 30 minutes.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into the tin and bake until golden.

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. Arrowroot + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Arrowroot
Provides a light, tender starch structure that gives the cake its fine, delicate crumb.
Egg whites
Whisked to stiff peaks, they trap air and lift the batter for a light, airy texture.
Butter
Creamed with the sugar, it adds richness and a tender texture to the cake.
Sugar
Creamed with the butter, it sweetens the cake and helps build a smooth base for the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Egg whites hold air only when whisked to stiff peaks. Folding gently keeps that air in the batter; stirring hard deflates it and the cake bakes up dense.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, lemon. 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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