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Dessert

Ice Cream Cake

A baked cake layered with a sweet cream made from sugar, egg whites, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Ice Cream Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the cake

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, cream together the powdered sugar and butter.

  3. Add the milk, cornstarch, flour, and baking powder, mixing well.

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

  5. Pour the batter into jelly pans and bake until golden.

Make the cream and assemble

  1. In a saucepan, pour boiling water over 4 cups of sugar and boil until it thickens.

  2. Pour the hot sugar over the beaten egg whites and stir until cool and creamy.

  3. Add tartaric acid and vanilla to the cream mixture.

  4. Spread the cream between the layers of cake and cover the top layer.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 lighten the batter and help the cake rise and set.
Butter
Creamed with the sugar, it adds richness and tenderness to the cake.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Cornstarch
Softens the flour's gluten, giving the cake a finer, more tender crumb.
Sugar
Boiled with water into a syrup that is beaten into the egg whites to make the cream.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the cake rise.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot sugar into the egg whites. The sugar syrup must be hot enough to cook the egg whites and stabilise the foam. Pouring it in slowly while beating keeps the whites from scrambling and gives a smooth, stable cream.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

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