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Baking

White Mountain Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, milk, flour, baking powder, egg whites, bitter almond flavor, and coconut or almonds for filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,093 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. 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. In a separate bowl, mix the flour and baking powder, then sift twice.

  4. Add the milk to the creamed butter and sugar, alternating with the flour mixture and egg whites.

  5. Add the bitter almond flavor to the batter.

Bake and fill

  1. Pour the batter into a loaf pan or round cake pans.

  2. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

  3. Once cooled, layer the cake with fresh grated coconut or chopped blanched almonds.

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. Almond + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and add richness and a tender crumb.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Egg whites
Add structure and lift, helping the cake rise and set light in texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the heat so the batter rises and becomes airy.
Granulated sugar
Creamed with butter to aerate the batter and sweeten the cake.

The step that matters

Adding the egg whites and flour. Alternating the flour with the milk and egg whites, and avoiding overmixing, keeps the batter smooth. Overmixing after the flour goes in develops gluten, which can make the cake tough and dense.

Swap the coconut

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

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

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