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Ice Cream Cake

A layered cake made with beaten egg whites, sugar, butter, milk, flour, baking soda, flavored with strawberry coloring and flavorings, topped with frothy frosting.

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

Make the batter

  1. Beat the whites of 5 eggs thoroughly.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in a little milk.

  3. Mix the cream of tartar with the flour.

  4. Cream the butter and sugar together. Add the eggs. Add the flour. Add the dissolved soda and milk.

  5. Separate the mixture in half.

  6. Color one half with strawberry coloring. Add a different flavoring to each half of the cake.

Bake

  1. Butter a baking pan.

  2. Pour in the white mixture first, then the pink mixture on top.

Make the frosting and finish

  1. Beat the whites of 4 eggs to a stiff froth. Gradually stir in 1 cup of sugar.

  2. Place the cake on a sieve.

  3. Spread the frosting on while hot.

  4. Mark the icing in squares with a knife.

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. Milk + strawberrytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,130 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Beaten whites trap air, giving the cake lightness and an open structure.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it sets.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich, soft crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the whipped whites hold their foam.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that makes the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the whites, stabilizing their foam and supporting the rise with the baking soda.

The step that matters

Pour in the white mixture first, then the pink mixture on top.. The two batters are layered in the pan rather than mixed, so the separate colors and flavors stay distinct. Pouring gently keeps the batters from blending as they bake.

Swap the strawberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Strawberrythe original

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