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Dessert

Marble Cake

A cake with alternating white and dark batter swirled together.

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.

Prepare

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

  2. Grease two long deep pans.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

Make the batters

  1. Cream together the white sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the sour milk, cream of tartar, baking soda, and flour to the butter mixture, mixing well.

  3. Combine the brown sugar, molasses, butter, egg yolks, sour milk, baking soda, nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice, and cloves. Mix the dark batter until smooth.

Bake

  1. Pour the white batter and dark batter into the pans, swirling them together as desired.

  2. Bake for 30-40 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 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. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped whites and yolks add lift and a tender, airy crumb.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and tenderness.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the leavening to help the cake rise and stay tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk and cream of tartar to produce rising gas.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep flavour, and dark colour to the spiced batter.

The step that matters

Swirling the two batters. Over-swirling blends the light and dark batters into an even colour, losing the marbled pattern. Pour gently and swirl only a few times so the batters stay in separate streaks.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

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