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Dessert

White Mountain Jelly Cake

A cake made with butter, sugar, flour, milk, eggs, baking soda, cream of tartar, and frosted with egg whites and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

White Mountain Jelly 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. In a large bowl, combine butter, sugar, flour, milk, and eggs without separating the eggs.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk.

  4. Stir the cream of tartar into the flour.

  5. Mix everything together until smooth.

Bake and frost

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared cake pan and bake until golden brown.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add fine white sugar until glossy.

  3. Spread the frosting between the layers of the cake.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake's crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness to the batter.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter and stabilizes the leavening reaction.
Baking soda
Reacts with acid in the batter to produce gas for rising.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stable foam that gives the frosting its airy texture.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff, then add sugar. Egg whites must be beaten to a stiff, stable foam before the sugar is added gradually. Under-beaten or greasy whites will not hold their shape, and sugar added too early slows foaming. Gradual sugar produces a glossy, stable frosting.

“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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