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Dessert

Chocolate Marble Cake

A cake with alternating layers of chocolate and vanilla batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Chocolate 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 batter

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

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the flour, sweet milk, baking powder, and salt, then mix until well combined.

  4. Take one cup of the batter and mix in the melted chocolate.

Marble and bake

  1. Grease a baking pan and pour the yellow batter into it to about an inch thick.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the chocolate mixture into the batter to form rings.

  3. Continue layering until all batter is used.

  4. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving a light, tender crumb and rich flavor.
Sugar
Creamed with butter for aeration and adds sweetness and gentle browning.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once its proteins set in the oven.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour to form the batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes airy.
Chocolate
Melted and swirled into part of the batter to create the marbled pattern and chocolate flavor.

The step that matters

Drop the chocolate mixture into the batter. Spoonfuls should be dropped gently rather than stirred in, so the chocolate stays in distinct ribbons. Overmixing blends the two batters into an even brown color and loses the marble effect.

“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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