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Dessert

Snow Cake

A light, frosted cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, and milk, topped with boiled frosting and almond paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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. Beat the butter until creamy.

  3. Gradually mix in the flour.

Make the batter

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add the sugar.

  2. Stir in the milk, then combine both mixtures.

  3. Pour the batter into a loaf pan or layer pans.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake until golden brown.

  2. Spread boiled frosting with pounded almonds or whipped cream between the layers.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped whites trap air that expands in the oven, lifting and structuring the cake.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, fine crumb.
Flour
Builds the cake's structure as its proteins set during baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps stabilise the beaten egg whites.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the recipe to release gas that helps the cake rise.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form a smooth, pourable batter.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Stiffly beaten whites hold air bubbles that give the cake its light texture. Under-whipped whites collapse, leaving a dense cake, so the whites should hold firm peaks before the sugar is added gradually.

“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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