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Dessert

Ice Cream Cake

A cake made with sugar, butter, milk, egg whites, flour, baking powder, and frosted with a sugar syrup and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Ice Cream 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, then add the sweet milk and mix well.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff.

  4. Combine the flour and baking powder, then gradually add the flour mixture to the batter.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  6. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans.

  7. Bake until golden.

Make the frosting

  1. For the frosting, boil the sugar and water until it forms a string when dropped from a spoon.

  2. Slowly pour the hot syrup into the beaten egg whites while beating constantly.

  3. Flavor the frosting with Royce's vanilla.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the cake a tender crumb and flavor.
Egg whites
Beaten to stiff foam, they trap air and give the cake its lift and structure.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the cake rise.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps tenderize the crumb.

The step that matters

Pour the hot syrup into the egg whites while beating constantly. Hot sugar syrup cooks the egg white proteins as it is beaten in, stabilizing the foam. Pouring too fast or stopping the beating can deflate the whites or leave the frosting lumpy.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

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