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Dessert

Marble Cake

A cake made by alternating batter of white and brown sugar, butter, eggs, flour, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Marble 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.

Prepare the batters

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

  2. In a bowl, beat the whites of 7 eggs until stiff.

  3. In another bowl, cream together 3 cups white sugar and 1 cup butter. Add 1 cup sour milk and 4 cups sifted flour to the creamed mixture. Stir in 1 teaspoon baking soda and flavor to taste.

  4. In a separate bowl, mix the yolks of 7 eggs with 3 cups brown sugar and 1 cup butter. Add 1 cup sour milk and 4 cups sifted flour to this mixture. Stir in 1 tablespoon each of cinnamon, allspice, and cloves, and 1 teaspoon baking soda.

Bake

  1. In prepared pans, alternate spoonfuls of the white and dark batter.

  2. Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 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

Eggs
Whites beaten until stiff add lift and a light, airy crumb; yolks enrich the dark batter.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavor in both batters.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to help the cake rise and keeps it moist.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk acid to produce gas that makes the cake rise.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and deepens the color of the dark batter.

The step that matters

Alternating the white and dark batter. Spooning the two batters in loosely, rather than stirring them together, creates the marbled pattern. Overmixing blends them into one even color and can toughen the cake by overdeveloping the flour's gluten.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, milk, flour, cinnamon, allspice. 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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