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Dessert

Marble or Spiced Cake

A pound cake with alternating plain and spiced layers baked into a marble pattern.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. 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.

Prepare the batter

  1. Prepare a pound cake batter and mix in the baking powder.

  2. Take one-third of the batter and stir in the cinnamon, mace, cloves, allspice, and grated nutmeg.

Assemble and bake

  1. Grease a pan and layer the plain batter and spiced batter alternately until the pan is full, finishing with the plain batter.

  2. Bake in a 350 °F (175 °C) oven until done.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Cake batter
Forms the structure and crumb of the cake.
Baking powder
Produces gas that lifts the batter as it bakes.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the spiced batter.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the spiced batter.

The step that matters

Layering the batters. Alternating the plain and spiced batters in the pan creates the marbled pattern. Keeping the layers distinct, rather than stirring them together, is what gives the cake its marbling.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cinnamon, clove, allspice, nutmeg):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, clove, allspice, nutmeg. 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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