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Dessert

Ice Cream Cake

A layered cake with butter, sugar, flour, corn starch, egg whites, and a sugar‑egg white icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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.

Make the cake

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

  2. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  3. Gradually add the corn starch and flour while stirring.

  4. Mix the baking powder with the flour before adding.

  5. Divide the batter into layers.

  6. Bake the layers until golden.

Make the icing

  1. Beat the 4 egg whites until light.

  2. Boil the 4 cups of sugar with ½ pint of water until clear and thick.

  3. Slowly pour the hot syrup over the beaten egg whites.

  4. Stir the mixture well.

  5. Dissolve the citric acid in a small amount of water.

  6. Add the dissolved citric acid to the icing.

Assemble

  1. Spread the icing between the layers and on top after it has cooled.

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

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

  3. Corn + almondtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together485 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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 give the cake tenderness and a rich flavour.
Egg whites
Beaten to a foam, they give the icing its light, airy structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the layers rise and turn light.
Corn starch
Softens the flour's gluten, giving the layers a finer, more tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, boiled into syrup, sets the icing.
Citric acid
Adds acidity that helps stabilise the icing and keeps it from turning grainy.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup into the egg whites. The syrup must be hot and poured slowly in a thin stream while beating, so it cooks the egg whites into a stable, glossy foam instead of deflating them or scrambling.

“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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