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Dessert

Marble Cake

A layered cake with alternating light and dark batters made from butter, sugar, milk, eggs, flour, molasses, spices, and baking powder.

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

Make the batters

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, cream together ½ cup butter and 1 cup white sugar until light and fluffy. Add ½ cup milk and 4 egg whites, mixing well. Stir in 2 cups flour and ½ teaspoon baking powder until combined.

  3. In another bowl, cream together ½ cup butter and 1 cup brown sugar. Mix in ½ cup molasses, ½ cup milk, and 4 egg yolks. Add 2 cups flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1 teaspoon cloves, a little mace, and grated nutmeg, mixing until smooth.

Bake

  1. Butter the cake mold and alternate spoonfuls of the light and dark batter.

  2. Bake for about 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Creams with the sugar to trap air and give a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Whites add lift and structure; yolks add richness and moisture to the batter.
All-purpose flour
Forms the cake's structure as its proteins set during baking.
Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture, and a deep, slightly acidic sweetness to the dark batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.

The step that matters

Alternating light and dark batter. Spooning the two batters in loose alternating layers creates the marbled pattern. Overmixing or packing them together blends them into a uniform brown color.

Swap the clove

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

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

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