Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. 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.
Make the batter
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.
Add the well-beaten eggs and cornflour alternately, mixing until combined.
Beat the mixture well for 25 minutes.
Bake and serve
Pour the batter into a large, buttered, and lined flat tin.
Bake until golden brown.
Let it cool slightly in the tin, then cut into squares.
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.
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Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Butter
- Adds fat for a rich, tender crumb and helps trap air when creamed with sugar.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cake and helps create a light texture when beaten with butter.
- Eggs
- Add moisture and set during baking to give the cake its structure.
- Cornflour
- Gives a fine, delicate crumb because it contains no gluten to toughen the batter.
The step that matters
Beat the mixture well for 25 minutes. Long beating incorporates air into the batter, which is the main source of lift in a cake without gluten. Beating too briefly leaves the cake dense and heavy.
“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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