Skip to main content
Dessert

Ice Cream Filling

A sweet filling made from sugar syrup and beaten egg whites, optionally with marshmallows or cherries, used between cake layers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Ice Cream Filling

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve the sugar in hot water.

  2. Boil until it cracks in cold water.

Make the filling

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Pour the boiling syrup over the egg whites while beating continuously.

  3. When the mixture begins to firm, spread it thickly between layers of white cake or alternating white and chocolate cake.

  4. If using marshmallows, cut them in half and place them on top of the filling.

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 + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the syrup that sets into a sweet, glossy, marshmallow-like filling.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that gives the filling its light, airy structure.
Hot water
Dissolves the sugar so it can be boiled into a syrup.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling syrup over the egg whites while beating. The syrup must be hot enough to cook the egg whites and set the foam, and beating continuously keeps the syrup from clumping or deflating the foam. Pouring slowly and steadily helps the mixture emulsify into a smooth, stable filling.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes