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Dessert

White Mountain Cake

A cake with a boiled sugar glaze.

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 cake

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

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the beaten egg whites and sweet milk, mixing well.

  4. Sift together the flour, corn starch, and baking powder; fold into the mixture.

  5. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake until golden.

Make the frosting and finish

  1. For the frosting, boil 2 cups of sugar and ½ cup of water until it spins a thread or forms a soft ball in cold water.

  2. Pour the hot syrup over the beaten egg whites and beat until cool.

  3. Spread the frosting between the layers and on the top and sides of the cake.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

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

Egg whites
Whipped foam that gives the cake its light, airy crumb and lift.
Butter
Fat that softens the crumb and adds richness to the cake.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Corn starch
Lightens the crumb by partly replacing flour, giving a tender texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and stays light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and keep moisture.

The step that matters

Cooking the frosting syrup to the right stage. The syrup must reach the thread or soft-ball stage, because its sugar concentration sets how the frosting firms as it cools. Pouring it over beaten whites while hot then beating until cool lets the whites trap air and form a stable, glossy frosting.

“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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