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Dessert

Marble Cake

A cake made by alternating dark and white batters to create a marbled effect.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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.

Prepare the batters

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

  2. Cream together 1 cup butter and 2 cups white sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add ⅓ cup sweet milk and 2 ⅓ cups all‑purpose flour, mixing well. Flavor with lemon.

  4. In another bowl, cream together ⅓ cup butter and ⅓ cup molasses.

  5. Mix in 2 cups all‑purpose flour, spices, 1 heaping teaspoon baking powder, 4 egg whites, 2 small cups brown sugar, 1 cup sour milk, and ¼ teaspoon baking soda. Add 1 whole egg and mix until combined.

Marble and bake

  1. Butter a cake pan well.

  2. Alternate spoonfuls of the dark and white batter until all is used.

  3. Bake in the preheated oven 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 the sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and help bind the batter as they set in the oven.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sour milk
Reacts with the baking soda to lift the batter and adds slight tang and tenderness.
Molasses
Gives the dark batter its color, moisture, and a deep, sweet flavor.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to make the cake rise and become light.

The step that matters

Alternating the dark and white batter. Spooning the batters in loose alternating layers, rather than stirring them together, keeps the two colors distinct so the marbled pattern forms during baking.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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