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Dessert

Ice Cream Cake

A baked cake with a whipped egg white icing.

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

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter. Add the milk and egg whites, mixing well.

  3. Gradually add the flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar, stirring until smooth.

  4. Divide the batter into two greased cake pans and bake for 25-30 minutes.

Make the icing and assemble

  1. For the icing, beat the egg whites until frothy.

  2. Gradually add the fine sugar and cream of tartar, beating for 15 minutes until stiff peaks form.

  3. Spread the icing between the cooled cakes and cover the top.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Eggs
Egg whites add structure and lift to the batter and help the icing hold its shape.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it tender and moist.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and richer flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidic ingredients to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the whipped egg whites so the icing reaches stiff peaks.

The step that matters

Beating the icing egg whites. Egg whites must be whipped until stiff peaks form, which traps air for volume. Adding sugar gradually and beating thoroughly keeps the foam stable and glossy instead of weeping or collapsing.

“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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