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Dessert

White Part

A marbled cake made with a white batter and dark batter swirled together.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

White Part

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

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

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the milk and mix well.

  4. Gradually add the flour and baking soda, mixing until smooth.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Marble and pour

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

  2. Use a spoon to swirl in dark batter to create a marbled effect.

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. Milk + buttertop 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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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
Trapped air from whipping gives the cake a light, airy structure.
Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and adds richness and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a soft, tender texture when creamed.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the cake its set structure.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps the batter blend into a smooth, pourable mixture.
Baking soda
Acts as a leavening agent that helps the cake rise.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Whipped egg whites hold air that makes the cake light. Vigorous stirring knocks that air out, leaving a dense cake, so fold with a wide, slow motion until just combined.

“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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