Skip to main content
Dessert

Marble or Spiced Cake

A layered cake with a white batter and a spiced dark batter, baked into a marble pattern.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Marble or Spiced 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the white batter

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

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

  3. Add the sour cream or buttermilk and mix well.

  4. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then fold into the batter.

  5. Sift together the flour and baking soda, then gradually add to the batter, mixing until just combined.

Make the dark batter

  1. In a separate bowl, combine the brown sugar, molasses, sour cream, butter, baking soda, and egg yolks.

  2. Mix in the flour and spices until smooth.

Bake and finish

  1. Grease a cake pan and layer the white and dark batters alternately until the pan is full.

  2. Bake for about 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

  3. Let cool before icing and decorating with chocolate drops.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Egg whites add lift and structure, while yolks add richness and help bind the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream and molasses to produce gas, helping the cake rise.
Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture, and a deep, slightly bitter sweetness to the dark batter.
Sour cream
Adds acidity and moisture, tenderizing the crumb and activating the baking soda.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stiff whites hold the air that lifts the batter. Folding gently with a spatula keeps that air in; stirring hard deflates it and leaves a dense cake.

“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 marble cake recipes

Chocolate 23 See all 221 →

You might also like

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesMolasses Sponge CakeMolasses Sponge Cake9 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes