icebox cake, made from cookies or sweet crackers spread with whipped cream and chilled to form a solid, sliceable mass, descends from a 200-year-old family of desserts that includes trifles and charlottes. See charlotte and trifle. Popularized by the proliferation of refrigerators (ice cooled in the later nineteenth century, then powered by gas or electricity in the early twentieth century), these desserts were promoted via cookbooks published by refrigerator makers, such as Alice Bradley’s 1927 Electric Refrigerator Menus and Recipes: Recipes prepared especially for the General Electric Refrigerator. See refrigeration. Magazines, newspapers, and cookbooks also provided recipes for icebox treats.
