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Dessert

Marble Cake

A layered cake with alternating light and dark batter, flavored with lemon and spices, baked until done.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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. 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.

Prepare the batters

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

  2. Beat the egg whites until frothy.

  3. Cream together the sugar and ½ cup of butter.

  4. Mix the sweet milk with baking soda and add to the butter mixture.

  5. In a separate bowl, combine cream of tartar and flour, then add to the wet ingredients.

  6. Flavor the mixture with lemon.

  7. In another bowl, mix the egg yolks, whole egg, ½ cup of butter, sugar, and molasses.

  8. Add baking soda and flour to the yolk mixture, then stir in spices and fruit.

Bake

  1. Layer the light and dark mixtures in a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick 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

Eggs
Whites are beaten for lightness; yolks and the whole egg add richness and structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to add fat, tenderness and a rich crumb.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidic ingredients to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and the dark colour of the darker batter.

The step that matters

Layering the light and dark mixtures. Pour the batters in loose alternating spoonfuls rather than mixing them, so the light and dark portions stay distinct and the marbled pattern forms during baking.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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