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Dessert

Snow Cake

A light, airy cake made with butter, powdered sugar, egg whites, arrowroot, and flavored with lemon, almond, or vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 553 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. 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.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Gradually add the powdered sugar and arrowroot while continuing to beat.

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

  4. Gently fold the egg whites into the butter mixture.

  5. Add a few drops of your chosen essence and mix well.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a tin and bake at 350°F (175°C) until done, ensuring the outside doesn't burn.

  2. Once baked, slice the cake, remove the outer crust, and dust with powdered sugar before serving.

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. Arrowroot + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Creams with the sugar to give the cake richness and a tender crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air that lifts the cake and gives it its snowy lightness.
Arrowroot
Starch that makes the crumb fine and delicate, keeping it light and tender.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves easily into the butter, sweetening the cake and helping it brown lightly.

The step that matters

Folding the egg whites into the butter mixture. Stirring vigorously or overmixing deflates the whipped whites, removing the air that makes the cake light. Fold gently with a spatula until just combined.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Arrowrootthe original

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