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Dessert

Marble Cake

A cake made with alternating layers of white and dark batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. 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. In a bowl, beat the whites of 7 eggs until stiff.

  3. In another bowl, cream together 1 cup of butter and 3 cups of white sugar. Add 4 cups of flour, 1½ cups of sour cream, and 1 teaspoon of baking soda to the butter mixture. Mix until smooth.

  4. In a separate bowl, mix the yolks of 7 eggs, 2 cups of brown sugar, 1 cup of molasses, 1 cup of sour cream, 5 cups of flour, and 1 teaspoon of baking soda. Add 1 tablespoon each of cloves, allspice, cinnamon, and nutmeg to the dark batter.

Marble and bake

  1. Pour a layer of the white batter into a baking pan.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the dark batter onto the white batter and spread the remaining white batter over it.

  3. Bake 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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Eggs
Whites beaten until stiff trap air, giving the cake lift and a light crumb.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once mixed with liquids and set by heat.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and add richness and tender texture.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and acidity that tenderizes the crumb and reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream and molasses to produce gas that makes the cake rise.
Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture, and deep sweetness to the dark batter.

The step that matters

Spooning in the dark batter. Dropping the dark batter in spoonfuls and only lightly spreading the white batter over it keeps two distinct colors. Overmixing blends them into a uniform brown cake and deflates the air from the beaten egg whites.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Gingerfits about as well

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