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Dessert

Ice Cream Cake

A layered cake with custard filling and boiled icing.

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. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and softened butter.

  3. Add the sweet milk and eggs, mixing well.

  4. Gradually stir in the flour and baking powder until combined.

  5. Pour the batter into two greased cake pans and bake until golden.

  6. Once cooled, remove the brown top of the under layer with a sharp knife.

Make the custard

  1. For the custard, heat 1 cup of sweet milk until near boiling.

  2. Dissolve the corn starch in a small amount of the milk.

  3. Add the dissolved corn starch to the hot milk.

  4. Beat the egg with the powdered sugar.

  5. Mix the beaten egg and sugar into the milk.

  6. Flavor the custard with pineapple or vanilla.

Assemble and frost

  1. Spread the custard between the cake layers.

  2. Frost with boiled icing.

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. Milk + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together885 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once its proteins set in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavor in the batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the cake to rise and turn light.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk into a custard that holds between the layers.

The step that matters

Add the dissolved corn starch to the hot milk. Cornstarch must be fully dispersed in cold liquid first; added directly to hot milk it clumps. Once in the hot milk, it must be stirred until it thickens, because starch gelatinises only when heated enough to swell and set.

Swap the pineapple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, milk, egg, flour, corn):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, egg, flour, corn. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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