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Dessert

Marble Cake

A cake made by alternating dark and white batters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

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

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the butter and white sugar.

Make the batters

  1. Add the sweet milk, cream of tartar, baking soda, and flour, mixing well.

  2. In another bowl, beat the yolks of the eggs with brown sugar, molasses, sour milk, and baking soda.

Bake

  1. Combine the two mixtures, alternating spoonfuls of dark and white batter in the pan.

  2. Bake until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb once baked.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and emulsify the batter, while the eggs help set the structure.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep colour and a robust sweetness to the dark batter.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda, helping the dark batter rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to release gas that lifts the cake.

The step that matters

Combining the two batters. Stir only enough to join the batters loosely. Overmixing develops gluten and deflates the batter, which blurs the dark and white swirls and makes the cake dense.

“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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