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Dessert

Marble Cake

A layered cake made with alternating white and dark batters, flavored with spices and molasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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

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 light batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together 1 cup white sugar and ½ cup butter until light and fluffy.

  3. Add ½ cup sweet milk and 2 cups flour, mixing well.

  4. Fold in the whites of 4 eggs until combined.

Make the dark batter

  1. In another bowl, mix 1 cup brown sugar, ½ cup molasses, and ½ cup butter.

  2. Stir in ½ cup sour cream and the yolks of 4 eggs.

  3. Add 2½ cups flour, ½ teaspoon baking soda, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, ½ teaspoon cloves, ½ teaspoon allspice, and ½ nutmeg, mixing until smooth.

Bake

  1. Layer the white and dark batter in a greased cake pan and swirl with a knife.

  2. 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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the crumb tenderness and flavor.
Eggs
Provide structure and lift from the whites, and richness from the yolks.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure as its proteins set during baking.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and deepens the color of the dark batter.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color and a robust, slightly bitter flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream and molasses to help the cake rise.

The step that matters

Swirl the batters lightly. Overmixing or heavy swirling blends the light and dark batters together, losing the marbled pattern and making the crumb uniformly dense in color.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

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