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Dessert

Marble Cake

A layered cake made with alternating white and dark batters, flavored with lemon and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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).

Make the batters

  1. In a bowl, cream together 1 cup butter and 3 cups white sugar until light and fluffy.

  2. Add 5 cups flour, ½ cup milk, ½ teaspoon baking soda, and the 8 egg whites. Mix well and flavor with lemon.

  3. In another bowl, cream together 1 cup butter and 3 cups brown sugar.

  4. Stir in 1 cup molasses, 1 cup milk, 4 cups flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 egg, and the 8 egg yolks. Add spices to taste.

Layer and bake

  1. In deep pans, layer the dark batter followed by the white batter, repeating until all batter is used, finishing with the dark batter.

  2. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center 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. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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
Adds richness and a tender crumb by coating flour and sugar during creaming.
White sugar
Sweetens the light batter and helps it stay moist and tender.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the dark batter and adds moisture and depth to its colour.
All-purpose flour
Builds the cake's structure once its proteins set in the oven.
Eggs
Add structure, moisture and lift to both batters through their whites and yolks.
Molasses
Darkens the batter and adds moisture and a rich, slightly acidic flavour.

The step that matters

Bake until fully set. Deep pans hold a thick batter that bakes slowly, so the centre can stay wet while the edges brown. A toothpick inserted in the centre coming out clean shows the cake is set all the way through.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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