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Dessert

Ice Cream Cake

A baked cake with a sweet cream topping made from egg whites, sugar, and vanilla.

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 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.

  3. Add the flour, corn starch, and sweet milk, mixing well.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the whites of 8 eggs until stiff.

  5. Fold the egg whites into the batter.

  6. Add the baking powder and mix gently.

  7. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake until golden.

Make the cream

  1. For the cream, beat the whites of 4 eggs until stiff.

  2. Pour boiling water over 4 cups of sugar in a saucepan and boil until stringy.

  3. Pour the sugar mixture over the beaten egg whites and beat until cold.

  4. Add tartaric acid and vanilla, mixing well.

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. Corn + milktop 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

Butter
Creamed with sugar, it gives the cake tenderness and richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake, tenderizes its crumb, and forms the syrup for the cream.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Corn starch
Softens the flour's gluten, producing a finer, more tender crumb.
Eggs
Whipped whites trap air, lightening the batter and helping the cake rise.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, making the cake rise in the oven.

The step that matters

Pour the boiled sugar over the egg whites while beating. The sugar must be boiled until stringy so it sets the foam properly. Pouring it in slowly while beating keeps the whites from deflating and cooking unevenly.

“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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