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Dessert

Snow Cake

A light, fluffy cake made with arrowroot, powdered sugar, butter, eggs, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Beat the butter until creamy.

  3. Add the whole egg and mix well.

  4. Incorporate the arrowroot (or cornflour), powdered sugar, and lemon juice.

  5. If the mixture is not light enough, add another egg.

  6. Beat for 30 minutes until the mixture is white and fluffy.

Bake and cool

  1. Line a flat baking tin with buttered paper and pour in the batter.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven for 1 to 1.5 hours without allowing it to brown.

  3. Let the cake cool, then cut into small squares and transfer to a flat dish to cool completely.

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 or cornflour
Provides a light, delicate structure as its starch sets during baking.
Unsalted butter
Adds fat for a tender, rich crumb and carries air when beaten.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the cake and dissolves fully for a fine, even texture.
Eggs
Provide structure and lift, with beaten air and egg proteins setting the crumb.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and fresh aroma that balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Beat for 30 minutes until white and fluffy. Long beating whips air into the butter and sugar mixture, which gives the cake its light texture. If it is under-beaten, the cake will be dense and heavy after baking.

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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