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Dessert

Marble Cake

A layered cake with alternating white and brown batters made from sugar, butter, milk, flour, eggs, molasses, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. 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, cream together 1 ½ cups sugar and ½ cup butter until light and fluffy. Add ½ cup milk and mix well.

  3. In another bowl, combine 2 ½ cups flour and 1 large teaspoon baking powder. Gradually add the flour mixture to the creamed mixture, mixing until smooth.

  4. Stir in the lemon flavoring and then fold in the egg whites.

Make the brown batter

  1. For the brown part, cream together ½ cup butter and ½ cup sugar. Add ½ cup milk and 1 cup molasses, mixing well.

  2. In a separate bowl, combine 2 ½ cups flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 2 tablespoons cinnamon, and 1 tablespoon cloves. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the molasses mixture, then fold in the egg yolks.

Bake

  1. In a greased cake pan, alternate layers of the white and brown batter.

  2. Bake for 30‑40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center 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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Eggs
Egg whites and yolks provide structure and lift, setting the crumb as the cake bakes.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake crumb once its starches set in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich, soft crumb.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark colour and a deep sweetness to the brown batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the cake rise.

The step that matters

Alternating the white and brown batters in the pan. Pouring the two batters in layers without mixing them too much keeps the marbled pattern. Overmixing blends them into a uniform brown cake.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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