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Dessert

Marble Cake

A layered cake made with alternating white and dark batter, baked at 350°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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

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

Make the batters

  1. For the white part, cream together the butter and egg whites.

  2. Add the sweet milk, sifted flour, and baking powder to the mixture.

  3. For the dark part, cream the butter and brown sugar.

  4. Mix in the sour milk, baking soda, sifted flour, and beaten egg yolks.

  5. Add the ground spices to the dark mixture.

Bake

  1. In a prepared pan, layer the white and dark mixtures alternately.

  2. Bake for 1.5 hours.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 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. Flour + eggtop 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

Unsalted butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Egg whites
Add structure and lift to the white batter as they set in the oven.
Egg yolks
Add richness and moisture to the dark batter and help it bind.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the white batter so it rises and becomes light.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to lift the dark batter and tenderize it.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture, and the deep color of the dark batter.

The step that matters

Layering the white and dark mixtures. Alternating the two batters in the pan creates the marbled pattern. Over-stirring them together after layering blends the colors and loses the marble effect, so layer gently.

“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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