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Dessert

Ice Cream Cake

A layered cake with a powdered-sugar icing made from egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the cornstarch, flour, sweet milk or cream, baking powder (or baking soda), and cream of tartar. Mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the whites of 8 eggs until stiff peaks form, then gently fold into the batter.

  5. Divide the batter into layers and bake until golden.

Make the icing and finish

  1. For the icing, boil the powdered sugar and water until thick like candy.

  2. Drip the boiling sugar over the beaten whites of 4 eggs, beating continuously until well combined.

  3. Allow the cake and icing to cool before serving.

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. Flour + milktop 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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, and creaming it with sugar traps air for a tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, fluffy texture when creamed with butter.
Cornstarch
Softens the crumb and keeps the cake tender by diluting the flour's gluten.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Eggs
Whipped whites add lift and airy structure to the batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises in the oven.

The step that matters

Drip the boiling sugar over the whites while beating. The syrup must be boiling hot and poured steadily while beating so it cooks the egg whites and forms a stable, glossy icing. Pouring too slowly or letting the syrup cool can leave it grainy or runny.

“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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