Marble Cake
1/3 cup Cottolene. 1 cup sugar. 2 eggs. 1/2 cup milk. 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon. 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg. 1/4 teaspoon salt. 1¾ cups flour. 3 teaspoons baking powder. 1 tablespoon molasses.
PROCESS: Cream Cottolene, add sugar gradually, yolks of eggs beaten until thick and light, flour sifted with baking powder, alternately with milk. Fold in whites of eggs beaten until stiff. Turn one-third of this batter into a bowl and add to it molasses and spices. Pour into well-greased pan, alternating light and dark mixtures to give it the "marbled" appearance.
Bake forty to forty-five minutes in a moderate oven.
A plain spice-marbled butter cake from the era when shortening was sold under brand names. The method is standard creaming, and the only real technique is in the layering.
- CottoleneA shortening of cottonseed oil compounded with beef suet, sold by the N. K. Fairbank Company, whose advertising underwrote recipe booklets of this period. It has been off the market for decades; substitute an equal weight of vegetable shortening, or butter if you want more flavour, keeping in mind that butter will brown the crumb faster.
- Flour quantityThe flour line reads as 1 3/4 cups. With 3 teaspoons of baking powder that is a generously leavened batter, in line with soft-wheat pastry flour of the day; modern all-purpose flour will give a slightly tighter crumb.
- Moderate ovenConventionally taken as about 350F, though the term covered a range. Forty to forty-five minutes suits a loaf pan or an 8-inch square; a tube pan of the same batter may take a few minutes longer. Test with a skewer.
- MarblingAlternate spoonfuls of light and dark rather than pouring in layers, then draw a knife through the pan once or twice in an S. Overworking the swirl blends the two batters into a uniform tan cake.
- The dark thirdOne tablespoon of molasses plus the spices adds a little liquid and acidity to that portion. Stir it only until the colour is even.
- Egg whitesFold the beaten whites in last and stop while a few streaks remain; the batter is then divided, and every additional stir deflates it further.
- YieldOne loaf or 8-inch square cake, roughly eight to ten slices. It keeps well wrapped for two or three days.
Marble cake in nineteenth-century American books usually meant a light-and-dark batter of exactly this kind: the same cake divided, with one part darkened by molasses and warm spices, or later by chocolate. Earlier versions were sometimes darkened with brown sugar and cloves, and the chocolate marble most people picture today is generally said to have become the default after cocoa powder grew cheap and widely available in the early twentieth century. The recipe names Cottolene outright, though naming a branded shortening was common enough in general cookbooks of the period as well.