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Dessert

Ice Cream Cake

A cake with a meringue frosting made from sugar syrup and egg whites.

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

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the cake

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

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

  3. Add the flour, corn starch, sweet milk, egg whites, and baking powder. Mix until smooth.

  4. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for about 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the frosting

  1. For the frosting, boil the water and sugar together until it reaches a candy-like consistency.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gradually pour the hot sugar mixture over the egg whites while stirring continuously.

  3. Dissolve the citric acid in a small amount of cold water and add it to the frosting, mixing well.

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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Egg whites
Add structure and lift to the batter, and form the stiff foam that makes the frosting light.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and become light.
Corn starch
Softens the crumb and makes the cake more tender than flour alone.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, boiled to a candy-like syrup, forms the body of the frosting.
Citric acid
Adds acidity that stabilises the egg white foam and brightens the sweet frosting.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot sugar syrup into the egg whites. Pour the syrup slowly while beating continuously. Egg whites cooked by the hot syrup set into a stable, glossy foam; pouring too fast or stopping the beater can deflate the foam or leave the frosting grainy.

“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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