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Dessert

White Mountain Cake

A layered cake made with flour, sugar, butter, eggs, milk, baking soda, and frosted with beaten egg whites, sugar, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the cake

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

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk and add it to the mixture.

  5. Gradually add the flour, mixing until just combined.

  6. Divide the batter into four greased cake pans and bake for 25-30 minutes.

  7. Let the cakes cool completely before frosting.

Frost and assemble

  1. For the frosting, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gradually add sifted sugar and lemon juice, beating until thick.

  3. Frost the top of one cake, layer another on top, and repeat until all layers are stacked.

  4. Frost the sides and edges of the cake to finish.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and adds richness and a tender texture.
Eggs
Add structure, moisture and richness to the batter as they set in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the batter to produce gas that helps the cakes rise.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they create the light, airy structure of the frosting.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, fluffy texture when creamed with butter.

The step that matters

Cooling the cakes completely before frosting. Warm cake releases steam and softens the crumb, so frosting melts, slides off, or turns soggy. Full cooling lets the layers set firmly enough to stack.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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