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Dessert

Marble Cake

A two-batter loaf cake with lemon-flavored white batter and spiced dark batter, baked to create a marbled pattern.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batters

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together ½ cup butter and 1½ cups sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add 2 cups flour, ½ cup milk, the whites of 4 eggs, ½ teaspoon cream of tartar, and ¼ teaspoon baking soda. Mix well and flavor with lemon.

  4. In another bowl, cream together ½ cup butter and 1 cup sugar.

  5. Stir in ½ cup treacle, 2½ cups flour, ½ cup milk, the yolks of 4 eggs and 1 white, ½ teaspoon baking soda, ½ teaspoon cream of tartar, and spices.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the white and dark batter alternately into a greased loaf pan.

  2. Bake for 2 hours in a moderate oven.

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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and add richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the creamed butter hold air for a light texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the crumb as the batter bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and richness; whites lighten the pale batter and yolks enrich the dark one.
Treacle
Gives the dark batter its colour, moisture and molasses flavour.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to release gas that makes the cake rise.

The step that matters

Alternating the white and dark batter. Dropping the batters in spoonfuls rather than pouring them keeps two distinct colours for the marble effect. Stirring them together would blend them into one even tan crumb.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, milk, 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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