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Dessert

White Mountain Cake

A light, fluffy cake made with egg whites, flour, sugar, butter, milk, orange juice and rind, and coconut icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 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. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Gradually add the flour and beaten egg whites, mixing well.

  3. Squeeze in the juice of the oranges and add the grated rind of 1 orange.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake in layers at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

  2. Once cooled, layer the cake with icing mixed with grated coconut.

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. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

  5. Orange + coconuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together584 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Trap air when beaten, giving the cake its light, open structure.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with acid in the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Stabilises the beaten egg whites so their foam holds up better.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg whites. Beaten egg whites hold trapped air that makes the cake light. Mixing them in gradually and gently, rather than beating hard, helps keep that air from collapsing and keeps the crumb tender.

Swap the orange

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

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

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