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Dessert

Marbled Cake

A layered butter cake with chocolate swirls and sweet icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Marbled 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.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream butter and powdered sugar together.

  3. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Stir in sweet milk, baking soda, and cream of tartar sifted with flour.

  5. Take about 1 cup of batter and mix in grated chocolate and 1 tablespoon milk.

Marble and bake

  1. In a greased cake mold, alternate spoonfuls of yellow batter and dark chocolate mixture.

  2. Gently swirl dark mixture into yellow batter with a spoon.

  3. Continue layering until all batter is used.

  4. Bake until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Make the icing

  1. For icing, mix 1 cup sweet milk, corn starch, and chocolate in a saucepan.

  2. Boil for 2 minutes, then add vanilla and sweeten with powdered sugar to taste.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Cream + chocolatetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the batter as the cake sets.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise.
Grated chocolate
Gives the dark marbling its flavor and color.

The step that matters

Swirl the chocolate batter gently. Over-swirling mixes the dark and yellow batters into a uniform color instead of distinct marbling, and vigorous stirring can deflate the air trapped by the creamed butter and sugar, leaving a denser cake.

“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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