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Dessert

Ice Cream Cake, No. 2

A layered cake with a cream filling flavored with lemon and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Ice Cream Cake, No. 2

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cake

  1. Cream the sugar and butter together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the flour, baking powder, and lemon extract, and mix well.

  3. Gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  4. Pour the batter into jelly-cake pans and bake until golden.

Make the filling and assemble

  1. For the filling, beat the egg yolks until light, then mix in the cream and vanilla extract.

  2. Spread the filling between the layers of 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  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
Creams with the sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender, fine crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they add lift and an airy structure to the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise in the pans.
Egg yolks
Beaten into the cream filling, they add richness and help it thicken and set.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture to the filling, making it smooth and rich.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiffly beaten whites hold the air that lifts the batter. Stirring them in vigorously knocks that air out, so the cake bakes up dense instead of light. Fold gently, just until no white streaks remain.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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