Skip to main content
Dessert

Ice Cream Cake

A layered cake with butter, flour, and egg whites, topped with a lemon or vanilla flavored frosting and a cream filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. 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, lightly beat the egg whites and add sugar, butter, milk, flour, and baking powder, then mix until well combined.

  3. Pour into thin layers in cake pans and bake until golden brown.

Make the frosting

  1. For the frosting, boil 2 cups of sugar with ½ cup of water until it reaches a hair stage.

  2. Beat the 3 egg whites to a stiff froth and pour the syrup into the whites while stirring quickly.

  3. Flavor the frosting with lemon or vanilla extract.

Make the filling and assemble

  1. For the filling, beat the yolks of 4 eggs until light, then mix in 2 cups of cream and vanilla extract.

  2. Spread the filling between the layers of cake.

  3. Spread the frosting between the layers and on top of the 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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  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. Syrup + creamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped into the frosting to create a light, stable foam.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, boiled into syrup, forms the frosting base.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake layers together.
Baking powder
Releases gas to help the layers rise and stay light.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture to the filling.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup into the whipped egg whites. The syrup must be poured in a thin stream while whisking quickly, so the hot sugar cooks the egg whites into a stable, glossy foam instead of deflating or forming lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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