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Dessert

Marble Cake

A layered cake with alternating light and dark batters made from sugar, butter, milk, flour, eggs, molasses, spices, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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.

Prepare the light batter

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

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

  3. Add ½ cup sweet milk, 2 cups flour, 1 teaspoon cream of tartar, and ½ teaspoon baking soda. Mix well.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Make the dark batter

  1. In another bowl, mix 1 cup brown sugar, ½ cup molasses, ½ cup sour milk, 2 cups flour, and 1 teaspoon cream of tartar.

  2. Add ½ teaspoon baking soda, 4 egg yolks, and spices (cloves, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg). Mix until smooth.

Bake

  1. In a greased pan, alternate layers of the light and dark batter.

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

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

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

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

  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

Eggs
Whipped whites give lift, and yolks add richness and tenderness to the batter.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and gives the light batter a tender, fine crumb.
All-purpose flour
Its proteins set into the cake's structure as the batter bakes.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter and helps stabilise the leavening reaction with baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark colour, and a deep sweetness to the dark batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whipped whites hold air that gives the cake lift; stirring vigorously deflates them and leaves a dense cake, so fold gently until just combined.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

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