Skip to main content
Dessert

Marble and Feather Cake

A layered marble cake made with white and pink batters, flavored with lemon and vanilla, topped with chocolate or cocoa.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 and Feather Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA medium oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a medium oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream butter and sugar together.

  2. Add egg yolks one at a time, beating until creamy.

  3. Mix in 1 cup of flour sifted with ½ teaspoon baking powder.

  4. Add milk and beat until creamy.

  5. Sift in another cup of flour with 1½ teaspoons baking powder.

  6. Stir in egg whites and flavor with lemon extract.

Layer and bake

  1. Pour one-third of the batter into a greased and floured cake tin.

  2. Add red food coloring and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract to the remaining batter and mix well.

  3. Drop half of the pink batter in spoonfuls over the white batter in the tin.

  4. Stir 1 tablespoon of grated chocolate or cocoa into the remaining batter and pour it over the first two layers.

  5. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 50 minutes to 1 hour.

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. Vanilla + chocolatetop 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 richness and a tender crumb by coating flour particles and carrying flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the creamed mixture trap air for a lighter texture.
Egg yolks
Add richness and emulsify the batter, helping it hold together smoothly.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as the proteins firm up in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, causing the batter to rise and become light.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it spreads evenly in the tin.

The step that matters

Dropping the pink batter over the white. Spoon the batter onto the white layer gently and avoid stirring it in. Overmixing blends the colours into an even batter, so the marbled streaks disappear and the cake bakes with a uniform look.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

More marble cake recipes

Chocolate 23 See all 221 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesChocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipes