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Dessert

Marble Cake

A layered cake made with alternating white and dark batters baked until done.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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.

Prepare

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

Make the batters

  1. In a bowl, cream together 1 cup of butter and 3 cups of sugar until light and fluffy.

  2. Add 5 cups of flour, 1 cup of milk, and 1 teaspoon of baking soda. Mix well.

  3. In another bowl, cream together 1 cup of butter, 1 cup of brown sugar, and 1 cup of molasses.

  4. Add 1 cup of sour milk, 4 cups of flour, 1 teaspoon of baking soda, 1 whole egg, and 8 egg yolks. Mix until combined.

Bake

  1. Layer the dark batter at the bottom of a greased cake pan, followed by the white batter. Repeat layers.

  2. Bake for 45-60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center 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. 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. Flour + milktop 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help set the crumb as the cake bakes.
Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and adds fat for a tender texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep flavour, and the dark colour of the darker batter.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise and keeps the crumb tender.

The step that matters

Baking until a toothpick comes out clean. This dense, moist batter can look set on top while its centre is still wet. Baking until a tester comes out clean confirms the structure has set without over-browning the edges.

“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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