Marble Cake
Weigh and make a pound cake; add a spoonful of yeast, take one-third part of the batter and add to it two teaspoonfuls of cinnamon, two teaspoonfuls of mace, one teaspoonful of cloves, one teaspoonful of nutmeg, finely ground. Put in your pan, first a layer of the plain batter, then a layer of the spiced, finishing with the plain. The batter will make three layers of plain and two of spiced. It bakes in beautiful layers.--Mrs. C. L. T.
A pound cake divided and spiced rather than the cocoa-marbled cake the name suggests today. Most of the work is in the base batter; the spiced third is simply a portion scooped out and seasoned.
- "Weigh and make a pound cake"The classic ratio is a pound each of butter, sugar, flour and eggs — roughly 2 cups butter, 2 cups sugar, 4 cups flour and 8 to 9 large eggs. That is a large cake; halving it is reasonable for a modern pan.
- The "spoonful of yeast"Genuinely ambiguous. In 1870s American cookbooks "yeast" usually means liquid barm or a homemade yeast, but "yeast powder" was also a common name for the chemical baking powders then coming into use. Given that no rising time is allowed anywhere in the recipe, a chemical leavener is the likelier reading; a teaspoon or two of baking powder behaves as the text implies.
- Spice quantitiesSix teaspoons of ground spice go into one-third of the batter, so the dark layers are assertive. Freshly grated nutmeg and whole cloves ground at the last minute make a noticeable difference at this concentration.
- OvenThe recipe gives no oven direction. A pound cake of this size is normally baked slow to moderate; around 325F works. Expect roughly 1 1/4 to 1 3/4 hours in a deep tube or loaf pan; tent with foil if the top colors before the center sets.
- LayeringSpoon the batter rather than pour it, and spread each layer to the edges with an offset spatula. The batter is stiff enough that the layers stay distinct — this is a striped cake, not a swirled one, and the original says so.
- TestingA skewer in the center should come out clean and the cake should have pulled slightly from the pan sides. Cool in the pan 20 minutes before turning out; a hot pound cake this heavy tears.
- YieldThe full pound measure fills a 10-inch tube pan and serves 16 to 20. It keeps well wrapped for several days and improves on the second day as the spice spreads.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1878, gathered recipes from contributors across the state, credited variously by name or, as here, by initials only. Marble cake in nineteenth-century America was typically a light-and-dark cake in the sense used here: one batter plain, the other darkened with spices and often molasses or brown sugar. The chocolate version most people now picture became common later, as cocoa grew cheaper and more reliable toward the end of the century. The idea of layering two batters in a single pan is often traced to German baking traditions carried to Pennsylvania and beyond, though the technique appears widely enough by the 1860s that no single origin can be documented. What is clear is that the cake was a way to make a plain pound cake look like an occasion without buying anything extra — the spices were already in the cupboard.