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Dessert

Ick Cream Cake

A sponge cake layered with sweet cream and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,961 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Ick Cream Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cake

  1. Bake a sponge cake half an inch thick in jelly pans and let it cool completely.

Make the filling

  1. Beat the thick sweet cream until it resembles ice cream.

  2. Sweeten the cream to taste and add vanilla extract.

  3. Blanch and finely chop the almonds, then stir them into the cream.

Assemble

  1. Spread the cream thickly between the layers of the sponge 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. Almond + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Thick sweet cream
Whipped to form the rich, airy filling that gives the cake its ice cream-like texture.
Sponge cake
Provides light, porous layers that hold the cream filling between them.
Almonds
Add crunch and a nutty flavor that contrasts with the soft cream and cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream so it tastes balanced rather than flat.

The step that matters

Beat the cream until it resembles ice cream. Cream must be beaten to the right stiffness so it holds its shape and does not turn grainy or runny. Overbeating can make it grainy, while underbeating leaves it too loose to spread between the cake layers.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, milk, sugar, vanilla):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Hazelnutfits about as well
  4. Cocoafits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, milk, sugar, vanilla. 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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