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Dessert

Chocolate Ice Cream Cake

A chocolate cake with a chocolate ice cream flavored batter and a sugar‑egg white icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Chocolate 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 egg yolks and mix well.

  4. Sift the flour and baking powder together, then add to the mixture alternately with the cold water.

  5. Pour the boiling water over the grated chocolate and mix until smooth.

  6. Combine the chocolate mixture with the batter and flavor to taste.

  7. Pour the batter into layers or a loaf pan and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the icing

  1. For the icing, boil water and granulated sugar until clear.

  2. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks, then slowly pour the boiling syrup over them while beating continuously.

  3. Continue beating until the icing is stiff enough for the 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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + chocolatetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,543 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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
Yolks enrich the batter and whites whip into the icing for structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds tenderness and richness to the cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, boiled into syrup, gives the icing its stiff, glossy body.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Grated chocolate
Adds chocolate flavor and color to the batter.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling syrup into the egg whites. The syrup must be added slowly while beating constantly. Pouring it too fast or stopping the beating can cook the whites unevenly or deflate them, so the icing will not hold its stiff peaks.

“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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