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Marbled Cake
Light Part.--2/3 cupful sugar, 1/3 cupful of butter, 1/3 cupful sweet milk, 1/3 teaspoonful soda, 1/2 teaspoonful cream tartar, 2 whites of eggs, 1 1/3 cups of flour. Stir butter and sugar to a cream, add milk, soda, and flour with cream tartar, and lastly stir in the eggs; flavor with lemon or vanilla. Dark Part.--1/3 cupful brown sugar, 1/3 cupful molasses, 1/3 cupful butter; stir well and add 1/3 cupful sour milk, 1/3 teaspoonful soda, 1 1/3 cupfuls flour, and yolks of 2 eggs well beaten, or quite as well put in at the first; season with cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg, 1 teaspoonful each. Drop by spoonfuls alternately, and bake as a loaf half to three-quarters of an hour, or bake in layers, putting the brown part between the white layers with jelly or other good filling.
Two batters of nearly identical volume, one pale and lemon-scented, one dark with molasses and spice, dropped side by side so the loaf cuts into a marbled pattern. The proportions are sound; only the leavening and the oven need translating.
- Do not overmix the two battersDrop the light and dark by alternating spoonfuls and stop there, or at most draw a knife through once. Stirring the pan turns the pattern to uniform beige, which is the one thing this cake exists to avoid.
- Soda and cream of tartarThe light part uses 1/3 teaspoon soda with 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar, roughly the equivalent of about a teaspoon of modern baking powder, with the soda slightly in excess of the acid. Mix them into the flour dry and get the batter into the pan promptly, since the reaction begins as soon as liquid reaches it.
- Sour milk in the dark partThe soda there is activated by the acid in sour milk, not by cream of tartar. Cultured buttermilk is the direct modern stand-in; plain milk will leave that half flat and faintly soapy.
- OvenBake at 350F. A loaf of this size wants 40 to 50 minutes rather than the half hour the original allows at its shortest; test with a skewer in the centre.
- PanA standard 9 x 5 inch loaf pan, greased and floured, will take both batters, though it will be close to full. Baked in layers, the original sets the brown part between the white layers, so plan on three 8-inch rounds; expect roughly 20 to 25 minutes.
- The spicing is heavyA teaspoon each of cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg is three teaspoons of spice in a batter built on 1 1/3 cups of flour. That is deliberate in a molasses cake of this era, but half the cloves and nutmeg gives a result closer to modern taste.
- The whitesThe whites go in last, and the instruction does not say to beat them; whipping them to soft peaks and folding them in gives a noticeably lighter pale batter without changing anything else.
- YieldOne loaf, about ten slices, or a layer cake; the original sets the brown part between the white layers, so it is the middle layer, filled with jelly or, as the recipe allows, other good filling.