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Dessert

Ice Cream Cake

A layered cake with a sweet filling made from boiled sugar syrup and beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 cake batter

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

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy, then add the sweet milk and mix well.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gently fold them into the batter.

  4. Sift together the flour and baking powder, then gradually add to the batter.

Bake and make the filling

  1. Divide the batter into layers and bake until golden.

  2. For the filling, boil the sugar and water until it forms a thick syrup.

  3. Pour the boiling syrup over the beaten egg whites and mix well.

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

  5. Spread the filling on each layer of cake.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they give the batter lift and an airy, light structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds richness and tenderness to the cake crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's layers together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the cake rise and become light.
White sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps it brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling syrup over the beaten egg whites. Hot syrup must be poured in a thin stream while beating so it cooks the egg whites into a stable, glossy filling. Pouring too fast or letting the whites stand can cause them to deflate or stay runny.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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