Skip to main content
Dessert

Marble Cake

A layered cake with brown and white batter swirled together.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 dark batter

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the brown sugar, molasses, butter, flour, baking soda, and milk until smooth. Add the yolks of the eggs and spices, then mix well.

Prepare the light batter

  1. In another bowl, cream together the white sugar and butter. Add the milk, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, and the egg whites, mixing until combined.

Marble and bake

  1. Combine both mixtures by alternating spoonfuls in a greased cake pan. Swirl the batter gently to create a marbled effect.

  2. Bake for about 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick 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
Yolks enrich the dark batter and whites, whipped in, lighten the light batter and add structure.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich crumb in both batters.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep sweetness and color to the dark batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidic ingredients to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the egg whites and helps the light batter hold its lift.

The step that matters

Swirling the batter. Swirl gently, only enough to create streaks. Overmixing blends the two batters into a uniform color and deflates the air from the egg whites, reducing lift and tenderness.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

More marble cake recipes

Chocolate 23 See all 221 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesMolasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipes