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Dessert

Ice-creah Cake

A cake made with sugar, flour, egg whites, butter, sweet milk, baking powder, and a sugar‑egg white filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Ice-creah 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. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the beaten egg whites and mix well.

  4. Stir in the sweet milk and baking powder.

  5. Gradually add the flour until well combined.

  6. Pour the batter into greased jelly tins and bake until golden.

Make the filling and assemble

  1. For the filling, dissolve 1 cup of sugar in water and boil until brittle.

  2. Remove from heat and mix in the beaten egg whites.

  3. Beat the mixture until cold, then add the tartaric acid.

  4. Spread the filling between the cooled cakes.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the cake crumb as it sets in the oven.
Egg whites
Beaten to stiff peaks, they trap air and give the cake its light, airy texture.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to add tenderness and richness to the crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the cake to rise in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Beat the filling until cold, then add the tartaric acid. The boiled sugar must cool before the acid is added, or the filling can stay runny or fail to thicken. Beating the cooled sugar and egg white mixture traps air, giving the filling a light, stable texture.

“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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