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Dessert

White Mountain Cake

A light, fluffy cake flavored with bitter almond essence, filled with sweetened grated coconut, and topped with a stiff egg white icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

White Mountain 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the sweet milk and mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  5. Combine the baking soda, cream of tartar, and flour; sift together.

  6. Gradually add the flour mixture to the butter mixture, mixing well.

  7. Fold in the beaten egg whites and flavor with essence of bitter almonds.

Bake and fill

  1. Pour the batter into jelly cake tins and bake until golden.

  2. Once the cake is cool, fill it with grated coconut sweetened with powdered sugar.

Ice and set

  1. For the icing, beat the 3 egg whites until very stiff.

  2. Gradually stir in the powdered sugar and starch, mixing constantly for about 15 minutes.

  3. Flavor the icing with lemon juice.

  4. Spread the icing smoothly over the cake and let it set in a cool place.

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

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

  5. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Beaten to stiff peaks, they lighten the batter and give the cake its airy, tender crumb.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and add richness and a tender texture.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once mixed with the wet ingredients.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps create a light texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to release gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter, stabilizing the whipped egg whites and aiding the rise with baking soda.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently preserves the air whipped into the egg whites. Stirring vigorously would deflate the batter and produce a denser cake.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

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