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Dessert

Marble Cake

A layered cake with white and brown batter swirled together.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 ↓

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 batters

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the white sugar, sweet milk, butter, flour, egg whites, baking soda, and cream of tartar until smooth.

  3. In another bowl, combine the brown sugar, molasses, milk, baking soda, cream of tartar, egg yolks, cloves, allspice, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

Bake

  1. Layer the white and dark batters in a greased cake pan.

  2. Swirl the batters together gently with a knife.

  3. Bake for 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. Milk + buttertop 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Egg whites
Trap air and help the batter rise and set into a light, tender crumb.
Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, softening the crumb and helping it hold moisture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas, helping the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter, stabilizing the egg whites and reacting with baking soda to aid rising.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture, and gives the dark batter its flavour.

The step that matters

Swirl the batters together gently with a knife. Overmixing blends the light and dark batters into a uniform colour and loses the marble pattern. A few gentle turns keep the streaks distinct without deflating the air trapped in the egg whites.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

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