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Dessert

Snow Cake

A light, airy cake made with arrowroot, butter, sugar, egg whites and flavored with 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 almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 179 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. Cream the butter with the sugar until light and fluffy.

  2. Stir in the arrowroot and baking powder.

  3. Whisk the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  4. Gently fold the egg whites into the mixture.

  5. Beat the mixture well for 20 minutes.

  6. Add essence of almond or vanilla for flavor.

Bake

  1. Pour into a prepared baking pan.

  2. Bake for 1 hour at 350°F (175°C).

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 + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together179 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Arrowroot
Forms the bulk of the cake, giving it a light, tender crumb in place of wheat flour.
Egg whites
Whisked to stiff peaks, they trap air that lifts the batter and gives the cake its airy structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and add richness and a tender texture.
Castor sugar
Creamed with butter to form a light base and add sweetness.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to help the cake rise in the oven.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stirring too hard deflates the whisked whites and loses the air that lifts the cake. Fold gently, just until no white streaks remain.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Sweet potatofits about as well
  2. Arrowrootthe original
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, 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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