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Dessert

Marble Cake

A layered cake made by alternating dark and light batter mixtures in a buttered pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. 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.

Prepare the batters

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together ½ cup butter and 1 cup brown sugar.

  3. Add ½ cup sour milk with dissolved baking soda, ½ teaspoon ground cloves, and 1 teaspoon of the spice mix.

  4. In another bowl, cream ⅓ cup butter with 1 cup sugar.

  5. Mix in ½ cup sweet milk, 1½ cups flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, and 1 teaspoon vanilla or lemon extract.

Bake

  1. In a buttered pan, drop the dark mixture first, followed by the light mixture.

  2. Bake 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps carry flavor through the crumb.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and deepens the color of the dark batter.

The step that matters

Drop the dark and light batters into the pan. Dropping the batters in alternating spoonfuls, rather than mixing them fully, keeps them as separate swirls so the marbled pattern forms during baking.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, milk, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg, flour):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, milk, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg, flour. 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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