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Dessert

Marble Cake

A cake made with white sugar, butter, eggs, milk, flour, baking powder, chocolate, cochineal, vanilla, and powdered sugar icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. 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.

Make the batter

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

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks and milk, mixing well.

  4. Sift together the flour and baking powder, then add to the mixture.

  5. Separate the batter into three parts.

Color and bake

  1. In one part, mix in the dissolved chocolate. In another part, add the cochineal for coloring. Leave the third part plain.

  2. In a long tin pan, alternate spoonfuls of each colored batter.

  3. Bake until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Make the icing

  1. For icing, beat the egg white until stiff, then mix in vanilla and powdered sugar to desired consistency.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

  2. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 fat that makes the crumb tender and rich.
Eggs
Provide structure as whites and yolks set, and add richness and moisture.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the cake rise and become light.
White sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps tenderize its texture.
Chocolate
Gives the dark marbled batter its flavor and color.

The step that matters

Alternating the colored batters in the pan. Spooning the batters in loose alternating layers, rather than stirring them together, keeps the separate colors visible as marbling. Mixing them fully would give an evenly tinted 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.

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