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Dessert

Chocolate Marble Cake

A cake with alternating white and chocolate batter baked in a pan.

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.

Prepare

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

Make the batters

  1. Melt the chocolate in 3 tablespoons of milk and mix in ½ cup of sugar.

  2. In a bowl, combine the butter, remaining sugar, eggs, milk, flour, and baking powder.

  3. Take 3 tablespoons of the white batter and mix it with the chocolate mixture.

Bake

  1. In a buttered pan, layer the white batter and chocolate batter alternately until all the batter is used.

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. Milk + flourtop 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
Adds fat that gives the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Provide structure and help bind the batter as it sets in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as the batter sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the cake brown during baking.
Chocolate
Provides the dark flavor and color of the marbled chocolate batter.

The step that matters

Alternating the layers in the pan. Layering the white and chocolate batters unevenly or mixing them too much blurs the marble pattern. Gentle, alternating spoonfuls keep the two batters distinct so they separate into clear swirls as the cake bakes.

“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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