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Dessert

White Mountain Cake

A coconut-flavored cake with a butter, sugar, and egg white batter, topped with a coconut and powdered sugar icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,294 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. 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.

Prepare the batter

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

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

  3. Mix the cream of tartar and baking soda into the milk.

  4. Stir this mixture into the creamed butter and sugar.

  5. Add the beaten egg whites and flour, mixing until just combined.

  6. Flavor the batter with vanilla extract.

Bake and ice

  1. Divide the batter evenly among three jelly cake tins.

  2. Bake until golden.

  3. Beat the 3 egg whites until stiff.

  4. Gradually add the powdered sugar and grated coconut for flavor.

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. Vanilla + coconuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Egg whites
Beaten egg whites add lift and structure to the batter, giving a light, airy crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the beaten egg whites and reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas that helps the cake rise.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg whites and flour. Mixing only until just combined keeps the batter light. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which toughens the crumb and deflates the air whipped into the egg whites.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Coconutthe original
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Strawberryfits about as well

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