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Dessert

Marble Cake

A layered cake made by combining light and dark batter mixtures.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Make the batters

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. In another bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the sweet milk, baking powder, and flour to the creamed mixture, then fold in the egg whites and lemon flavoring.

  4. In a separate bowl, mix the egg yolks, brown sugar, molasses, butter, sour milk, baking soda, and flour.

Bake

  1. Combine the light and dark mixtures by swirling them together.

  2. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 2 hours.

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. Milk + flourtop 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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air that lightens the cake's crumb.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas for rising and a darker color.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the dark batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped egg whites trap air that makes the cake light. Stirring vigorously knocks that air out, so fold gently with a spatula until just combined.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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