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Dessert

Marble Cake

A cake with chocolate and cinnamon swirls, topped with a chocolate icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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.

Make the batter

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

  2. Cream the butter and both sugars together.

  3. Add a little tepid water, then gradually mix in the flour.

  4. Beat the mixture well.

  5. Add the baking powder to the last portion of flour.

  6. Fold in the egg whites last.

  7. Take out 1 cup of the batter and mix in the cinnamon and grated chocolate.

  8. Pour this mixture into the center of the cake batter.

Bake and ice

  1. Bake until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

  2. For the icing, cook the sugar, sweet milk, grated chocolate, and flour in a double boiler until thick.

  3. Let it cool, then spread over the cake.

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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cinnamon + chocolatetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,808 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Creamed with the sugar to give the cake its tender, rich texture.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Whites of 3 eggs
Folded in to add lift and airy structure to the batter.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps tenderize it when creamed with butter.
Grated chocolate
Creates the dark marbled streaks and a deeper chocolate flavor.

The step that matters

Pouring the chocolate batter into the center. Pour gently and do not stir it through. Stirring blends the chocolate evenly into the batter and loses the marbled pattern, while a heavy pour can sink into the plain batter.

“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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