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Dessert

Ice Cream Cake

A cake made with egg yolks, flour, butter, and sweet milk, topped with an egg yolk and powdered sugar icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 cake

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

  2. In a bowl, beat the yolk of one egg and the whites of three eggs until combined. Add 1 cup of sugar and mix well.

  3. Gradually add 1¾ cups of flour, ½ cup of sweet milk, ½ cup of butter, ½ teaspoon of baking soda, and 1 teaspoon of cream of tartar. Mix until smooth.

  4. Pour the batter into a loaf pan and bake until golden.

Make the icing

  1. For the icing, beat the yolks of two eggs and add 8 tablespoons of powdered sugar. Flavor to taste.

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 + buttertop 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. Flour + buttertop 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).

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

Eggs
Whipped whites and yolks give the batter structure and help it rise and set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the batter to produce gas that lifts the cake.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter, stabilizing the whipped egg whites and helping the cake rise.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it moist and tender while it bakes.

“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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