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Dessert

Ice Cream Cake

A layered cake made with butter, milk, flour, sugar, vanilla, egg whites, and optional walnuts, topped with a sugar syrup frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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.

  3. Add the milk and flour alternately with the baking powder, mixing well.

  4. Stir in the vanilla and then fold in the beaten egg whites.

  5. Pour the batter into three layer cake pans or five smaller ones.

  6. Bake until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Make the frosting

  1. For the frosting, boil the sugar and hot water until it threads from the spoon.

  2. Pour the syrup over the beaten egg whites, beating until nearly cool.

  3. Add the chopped walnuts and continue beating until the frosting is cool enough to spread.

  4. If desired, reserve some nuts to decorate the top and sides of the 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. 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. Vanilla + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,730 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 sugar to add tenderness and a rich, fine crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the layers rise and become light.
Eggs
Egg whites folded into the batter add lift and a lighter texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the frosting set smooth and glossy.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the whites, which lifts the batter; stirring hard would deflate it and give a dense cake.

Swap the walnut

The recipe marks walnut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, milk, flour, vanilla, egg):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

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