Skip to main content
Dessert

Ice Cream Cake

A sponge cake topped with a lemon or vanilla flavored icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. 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 batter

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

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

  3. Add the sweet milk and mix well.

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

  5. In another bowl, combine the cream of tartar, baking soda, and flour.

  6. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, folding in the egg whites gently.

  7. Pour the batter into jelly pans and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make and spread the icing

  1. For the icing, boil 1 cup of water and 3 cups of sugar until it forms a thick syrup.

  2. While the syrup is boiling, beat the whites of 3 eggs in a bowl.

  3. Pour the hot syrup over the egg whites while stirring continuously.

  4. Add the citric acid and flavor with lemon or vanilla.

  5. Spread the icing over each layer of the cake and on top.

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 + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks to lighten the batter and give the cake its rise and structure.
Wheat flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to release gas that makes the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so baking soda can react and help the cake rise.
White sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps tenderize its texture while creaming with butter.

The step that matters

Pour the hot syrup over the egg whites while stirring continuously. Hot syrup cooks the egg whites into a stable, glossy meringue-style icing. Pouring too slowly or stopping to stir can let the whites cook unevenly or lumpy, and the foam can collapse.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, egg, cream, wheat, flour. 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.

More ice cream cake recipes

Filling 6Chocolate 5 See all 127 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes