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Dessert

White Cake

A layered white cake with coconut, orange, raisins, chocolate, nuts, and citron, finished with a sugar‑egg white icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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White Cake

Why it works: Almond and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,093 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

White Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Dissolve corn starch in part of the milk and sugar, then stir to a cream.

  2. Add flour, the remainder of the milk, and the beaten egg whites.

  3. Flavor with almond extract.

Bake and fill

  1. Bake in 4 layers.

  2. For filling, use icing and nuts for the first layer, grated coconut and orange juice for the second layer, raisins and a dash of chocolate for the third layer, and nuts and citron for the fourth layer.

Make the icing

  1. For the icing, boil 4 cups of sugar with 1 cup of water until it can form a string (do not stir).

  2. Whip the egg whites and beat in the boiling sugar until cool.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Almond + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Corn + almondtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together485 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets the cake's crumb as it bakes.
Egg whites
Trap air when beaten, lifting the batter and giving the cake its light texture.
Corn starch
Softens the crumb and gives a finer, more tender texture than flour alone.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep the crumb moist and tender.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the layers rise.

The step that matters

Boiling the icing sugar to a string. Sugar syrup must reach the right concentration without stirring, which can cause crystals to form. Pouring the hot syrup slowly into the beaten whites keeps the icing smooth and glossy.

Swap the coconut

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

  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, milk, flour, corn, egg, almond. 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.

More white cake recipes

Egg 9Icing 8Plain 6Warsaw 5Almond 3Coconut 3 See all 331 →

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