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Dessert

Marble Chocolate Cake

A layered cake with white and chocolate batter swirled together.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Chocolate 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 the batter

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

  2. In a large bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff.

  3. In another bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

  4. Gradually add the flour, cornstarch, milk, and baking powder to the butter mixture.

  5. Take out 1 cup of the batter and mix in the grated chocolate moistened with a little milk.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour a layer of the white batter into a greased pan.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the chocolate batter onto the white batter.

  3. Spread the remaining white batter over the chocolate spots.

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. Flour + milktop 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

Egg whites
Beaten until stiff, they trap air and give the cake a light, open structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Sugar
Creamed with butter, it sweetens the cake and helps give a tender texture.
Flour
Provides the main structure of the cake once baked.
Cornstarch
Softens the crumb, making the cake more tender than flour alone would.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.

The step that matters

Spreading the remaining white batter over the chocolate spots. Spoon the chocolate batter gently and spread the white batter carefully so the layers stay distinct; heavy mixing blends the colours into an even brown and loses the marbled pattern.

“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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