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Dessert

Marble Cake

A cake with a marbled pattern made by mixing batter with egg yolk and spices, topped with a simple icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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

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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Measure the flour, add baking powder, and sift three times.

  3. Cream the butter and sugar together until light.

  4. Gradually add the flour and milk, mixing well.

  5. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the batter.

  6. For the marble effect, take 1 cup of batter, beat in 1 egg yolk, and add the spices.

  7. Layer the dark batter with the white batter in a loaf pan.

Bake and ice

  1. Bake until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

  2. For the icing, boil 1 cup of sugar, vinegar, and water until it threads.

  3. Pour the hot syrup slowly over the beaten egg white.

  4. Flavor the icing with almond extract.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Vanilla + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  3. Vanilla + milktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Vanilla + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Egg whites
Beaten to stiff peaks and folded in to lighten the batter and add structure as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps hold air when creamed with butter, adding tenderness.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid so the flour hydrates and the batter flows evenly.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stiff whites hold the air that lifts the batter. Overmixing or deflating them while folding makes the cake dense and flat, so fold gently until just combined.

Swap the clove

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

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

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