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Dessert

Snow Cake

A light cake made with potato flour, butter, sugar, eggs, lemon essence, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Snow Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.

  2. Add the beaten eggs alternately with the potato flour.

  3. Beat for 10 minutes.

  4. Stir in the lemon essence and baking powder.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered flat baking tin dusted with sugar and flour, about ½ inch thick.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 30 minutes, then turn out.

Finish and serve

  1. When cold, cut into finger lengths or fancy shapes.

  2. Optionally, cover with water icing if desired.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 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 that makes the cake tender and rich in flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, traps air for a lighter crumb.
Eggs
Provide structure and lift as they set in the oven.
Potato flour
Gives a light, delicate crumb with less gluten than wheat flour.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise in the oven.

The step that matters

Stir in the lemon essence and baking powder.. Baking powder starts releasing gas as soon as it is wet, so stir gently just until combined and get the tin into the oven promptly. Overmixing knocks out the air the batter has trapped, leading to a flatter, denser cake.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, lemon, sugar, egg. 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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