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Dessert

Ice Cream Cake

A baked cake made with butter, sugar, milk, corn starch, flour, baking powder, egg whites, and iced with a powdered sugar glaze.

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the cake

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

  2. In a large bowl, cream the butter and granulated sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the sweet milk, corn starch, flour, and baking powder, then mix until well combined.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  5. Gently fold the beaten egg whites into the batter.

  6. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  7. Bake for about 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the icing and finish

  1. For the icing, combine the powdered sugar and boiling water in a pan and boil until it reaches a soft ball stage.

  2. Beat the 2 egg whites until stiff.

  3. Slowly pour the boiling sugar mixture over them while beating until smooth and spreadable.

  4. Add flavoring to the icing as desired.

  5. Spread the icing over the cooled cake.

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks and folded in to add lift and an airy structure.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Corn starch
Softens the crumb by diluting the flour's gluten, giving a finer texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise in the oven.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves into the boiling water to form a sweet, spreadable icing base.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stirring vigorously deflates the whipped foam that gives the cake its lift. Fold gently with a spatula, just until no white streaks remain, so the batter keeps its air for baking.

“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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