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Dessert

Marble Cake

A cake made by alternating white and dark batter layers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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

two loaves
Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

  2. In separate bowls, mix the ingredients for the white and dark parts of the cake.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the white and dark mixtures alternately into a baking pan.

  2. Bake for 2 hours until done.

  3. This recipe makes two loaves.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg whites give the white batter lift and structure, while yolks add richness and tenderness to the dark batter.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich crumb in both the white and dark batters.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown and keep moist.
Treacle
Gives the dark batter its colour, sweetness and a molasses-like flavour.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidic ingredients to produce gas that helps the cake rise.

The step that matters

Dropping the white and dark mixtures into the pan. Spooning the two batters in alternating layers, rather than stirring them together, keeps them separate so the marbled pattern forms during baking. Mixing them fully would blend the colours into one even shade.

Swap the clove

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

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

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