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Dessert

Marble Cake

A layered cake with alternating white and dark batters made from butter, sugar, egg whites, milk, flour, spices, and molasses.

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

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

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

  3. Add 4 egg whites and 1 cup sweet milk, mixing well.

  4. Sift together 1 cup corn starch, 1½ cups flour, and 1½ teaspoons baking powder; add to the butter mixture.

Make the dark batter

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

  2. Add 2 eggs and ½ cup cold coffee to the brown sugar mixture, mixing well.

  3. Sift together 2 cups flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda, ½ teaspoon cinnamon, ½ teaspoon cloves, and ½ teaspoon nutmeg; add to the brown mixture.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a greased cake pan, alternate spoonfuls of the white and dark batters.

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

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

  2. Milk + coffeetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps the batter hold air when creamed with sugar.
Egg whites
Provide structure and lift to the light white batter as they set in the oven.
All-purpose flour
Forms the cake's structure once its proteins set during baking.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep sweetness to the dark batter.
Eggs
Bind the dark batter and add structure and richness as they set.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses and coffee to produce gas that lifts the dark batter.

The step that matters

Alternating the white and dark batters in the pan. Spooning the batters in alternating layers, rather than mixing them, creates the marbled pattern. Overmixing blends the two colors into an even brown and loses the swirl.

“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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