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Baking

Ice Cream Cake

A baked cake made from two butter‑sugar‑flour mixtures, flavored with baking soda, cream of tartar, and optional flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 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. In a bowl, cream together 1 cup of sugar and ½ cup of butter.

  3. Add 2 cups of flour, ½ cup of milk, and the beaten eggs. Mix well.

  4. Stir in ½ teaspoon of baking soda and 1 teaspoon of cream of tartar. Add flavoring to taste.

  5. In another bowl, cream 1 cup of butter with 2½ cups of sugar.

  6. Add 1 cup of milk, 4 cups of sifted flour, and 5 eggs. Mix until smooth.

  7. Stir in ⅔ teaspoon of cream of tartar and ½ teaspoon of baking soda.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for about 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness through fat coating the flour.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay moist.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour to form the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with acid in the batter to produce gas that lifts the cake.

The step that matters

Stir in the baking soda and cream of tartar. Baking soda and cream of tartar must be combined into a batter that is then baked promptly, because the gas-producing reaction starts once wet and begins to lose strength if the batter waits.

“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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