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Dessert

Marble Cake

A layered cake with pink, yellow, brown, and white batter swirled together.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,150 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Marble Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the batter

  1. Cream butter and sugar until soft and fluffy.

  2. If it doesn't cream quickly, add 1 or 2 tablespoons of boiling water and stir until light.

  3. Sift flour and baking powder together three times.

  4. Add 5 tablespoons of this mixture to the creamed butter and sugar and cream again.

  5. Gradually add the remaining flour and baking powder alternately with cold water, beating hard for one minute before adding stiffly beaten egg whites.

  6. Fold in the egg whites carefully using the underfold method.

Flavor and color the batter

  1. Divide the batter into four parts.

  2. Color one part pink with cake coloring and add ¼ teaspoon strawberry extract.

  3. Color another part yellow with cake coloring or use 1 egg yolk, adding ¼ teaspoon lemon extract.

  4. To the third part, add 1 ½ tablespoons cocoa, ¼ teaspoon cloves, ¼ teaspoon nutmeg, and ¼ teaspoon cinnamon.

  5. To the fourth part, add 1 teaspoon almond extract.

Bake and finish

  1. Grease and flour a tube cake pan.

  2. Pour the dark batter around the outer edge, followed by yellow, pink, and then white batter.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for about one hour.

  4. Ice with your choice of icing.

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 + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Butter + cocoatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together548 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-undecalactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Butter + strawberrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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
Creaming with sugar traps air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavor.
Egg whites
Whipped stiff and folded in, they add lift and an airy, structured texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and become light.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and, creamed with butter, helps create a soft, fluffy texture.
Cocoa
Adds chocolate flavor and color to the dark batter portion.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiffly beaten whites hold air that gives the cake its lift. Folding gently with the underfold method keeps that air in, so the cake does not deflate and turn dense.

Swap the cocoa

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, flour, egg, strawberry, lemon, clove):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, egg, strawberry, lemon, clove. 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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