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Dessert

Ice Cream Cake

A layered cake made with a butter and sugar batter, topped with a boiled sugar and egg white mixture.

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. Cream together the powdered sugar and butter.

  3. Add the milk, corn starch, flour, egg whites (beaten stiff), and baking powder, then mix well.

  4. Pour the batter into jelly pans.

  5. Bake until golden.

Make the icing and assemble

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

  2. Pour the boiled sugar over the beaten egg whites and stir until cold and creamy.

  3. Add tartaric acid and vanilla to taste.

  4. Spread between the cake layers and on 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. 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. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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
Beaten stiff, they trap air that lifts and lightens the cake crumb.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds fat that gives the cake a tender texture.
Flour
Provides the starch and protein that set the cake structure as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the cake rise in the oven.
Sugar
Boiled with water and whipped into the egg whites to form a glossy, marshmallow-like icing.
Corn starch
Lightens the crumb and softens the cake's texture by diluting the flour's gluten.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiled sugar over the egg whites. The syrup must be hot enough to cook the egg whites and stir in steadily; poured too fast or too cool, the icing can stay loose or fail to thicken into a stable foam.

“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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