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Dessert

Ice Cream Cake

A layered cake with butter, sugar, milk, flour, corn starch, baking powder, egg whites, and a lemon‑vanilla cream topping.

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 batter

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

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

  3. Add the milk and mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  5. Combine the flour, corn starch, and baking powder; gradually add to the butter mixture.

  6. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  7. Divide the batter into two layers.

Bake and make the cream

  1. Bake until golden.

  2. In a saucepan, boil the sugar and water until clear and candied.

  3. Pour the hot syrup over the beaten egg whites, beating until stiff and creamy.

  4. Stir in the lemon juice and vanilla extract.

  5. Spread the cream between the layers and on top 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. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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 trap air and add richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks to lighten the batter and give the cake its airy structure.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the layers rise and become light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, boiled with water, forms the syrup that makes the cream.
Corn starch
Softens the crumb by diluting gluten, giving a more tender texture.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup over the egg whites. The syrup must be hot and poured in a thin stream while beating, because the hot sugar cooks the whites and stabilizes the foam. Pouring too fast or letting it cool can leave the cream runny or grainy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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