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Dark Part
Yolks of seven eggs, three cups brown sugar, one of butter, one of sour milk, four of flour, sifted and heaping, one table-spoon each of cinnamon, allspice and cloves, one tea-spoor soda; put in pans a spoonful of white part and then a spoonful of dark, and so on. Bake an hour and a quarter. Use coffee-cups to measure. This will make one large and one medium cake. The white and dark parts are alternated, either by putting in a spoonful of white, then of dark, or a layer of white and then of dark part, being careful that the cake may be nicely " marbleized." - Mrs. M. E. Smith, Cleveland.
This is only half a cake: the dark batter of a marble cake, meant to be spooned into the pan alongside a companion white batter that uses the seven leftover whites. Read the two together before starting, because both must be mixed and ready at the same moment.
- Coffee-cup measureThe instruction to "use coffee-cups to measure" means a matched set rather than a standard modern cup; period coffee cups ran roughly 6 to 8 fluid ounces. Note that the spices and soda are given in spoons, not cups, so scaling the cup size up or down alters their proportion to the flour and milk.
- "One tea-spoor soda"A typesetter's slip for teaspoon. One teaspoon of soda is the correct amount for one cup of sour milk and needs the acid to work — this cake has no other leavening.
- Sour milkNot spoiled fresh milk. Use cultured buttermilk, or clabbered whole milk. Ordinary pasteurized milk soured on the counter is not the same thing and will not reliably react with the soda.
- The spicesA tablespoon each of cinnamon, allspice and cloves is three tablespoons of ground spice in four cups of flour — assertive but deliberate, since the dark part has to read as dark against the white. Ground cloves at that strength can turn medicinal; a scant tablespoon is safer if your spices are fresh.
- OvenThe original gives no oven temperature, only the time. A moderate oven, roughly 325 to 350F, suits an hour and a quarter in a large deep pan; test with a skewer from about 55 minutes, and expect the medium cake to finish first.
- MarblingAlternate spoonfuls, then draw a knife once or twice through the batter in a figure eight. More than that and the two parts blend into a uniform brown.
- Yolks onlySeven yolks with no whites gives a rich, close, slightly heavy crumb. Beat the butter and brown sugar thoroughly before adding them, since there is no whipped white to lighten the batter.
- YieldOne large and one medium cake, as stated; the yield covers the dark and white parts combined. The original specifies no pan sizes. Both keep well wrapped for several days.
Marble cake was a familiar item in American home baking by the later nineteenth century. The dark part here is colored and flavored with brown sugar and heavy spicing rather than chocolate. Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping, first published in 1877, prints such recipes under individual contributors' names — here Mrs. M. E. Smith of Cleveland — which is why the book reads less like a manual than a neighborhood's collective memory. The word "marbleized" is set off in quotation marks in the original.