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Dessert

Ice Cream Cake

A cake made with a batter of sugar, flour, eggs, boiling water, baking powder, topped with whipped thick sweet cream and chopped almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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.

Prepare the cake

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

  2. In a bowl, mix sugar, flour, eggs, boiling water, and baking powder until smooth.

  3. Divide the batter into two layers and bake until golden.

Make the filling

  1. Whip the cream and sweeten and flavor it to taste.

  2. Stir in the chopped almonds.

Assemble

  1. Once the cake layers are cool, place the cream mixture between the layers and on top.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Provide structure and richness, helping the batter set as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake crumb as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the layers rise and stay light.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown as it bakes.
Thick sweet cream
Whipped into a light, fatty filling that adds moisture and richness.
Blanched almonds
Add crunch and nutty flavor to the cream filling.

The step that matters

Cooling the cake layers before assembling. Placing whipped cream on warm cake layers makes the cream melt and slide off, and can leave the layers soggy. Cooling first keeps the filling thick and the layers intact.

“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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