Skip to main content
Dessert

Ice Cream Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, milk, egg whites, flour, and topped with a sugar syrup and whipped egg white icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. 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 large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the sweet milk and the egg whites, then mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the cream of tartar, baking soda, and flour.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture and stir until smooth.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into jelly pans.

  2. Bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make and spread the icing

  1. Boil 1 cup of water and 3 cups of sugar until it forms a thick syrup.

  2. Beat the egg whites in a bowl.

  3. Pour the hot syrup over the egg whites and stir continuously.

  4. Add the citric acid and flavor with lemon or vanilla extract.

  5. Spread the icing over each layer of the cake.

  6. Spread the icing on top.

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. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + wheattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,002 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs whites
Whipped or beaten to build the airy structure of the cake and icing.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to add tenderness and richness to the crumb.
White sugar
Creams with butter for a tender crumb and adds sweetness and browning.
Winter wheat flour
Provides the main structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter, helping the leavening react and stabilizing the egg whites.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup over the egg whites. The syrup must be hot and poured in a slow stream while stirring constantly. This cooks and stabilizes the beaten whites into a glossy, thick icing; pouring too fast or letting the mixture cool can make it runny or grainy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

More ice cream cake recipes

Filling 6Chocolate 5 See all 127 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes