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Marble Cake
Mrs. D. McCraney.
WHITE PART. One cup of butter, two cups of white sugar, half a cup of sour cream or buttermilk, three and a-half cups of flour, whites of seven eggs, one teaspoonful of soda. BLACK PART.-Two cups of brown sugar, one cup of butter, one cup of molasses, five cups of flour, half a cup of sour cream or buttermilk, yolks of seven eggs, one grated nutmeg, two tablespoonsful of cinnamon, one tablespoonful of cloves, one tablespoonful of allspice, one teaspoonful of black pepper, one teaspoonful of soda.
Two separate batters, spooned into the pan in alternating layers and swirled once. Everything the original leaves out — pan, oven, time — has to be supplied.
- Scale firstTogether these batters use two cups of butter, eight and a half cups of flour and seven eggs, separated (whites to the white part, yolks to the black). That is a very large cake, probably enough for a 10-inch tube pan plus a loaf, or two 9-inch tube pans. Halving both parts is reasonable for a modern household.
- OvenNo temperature is given because none could be. Bake at 325-350F; a cake this dense and this deep will take 60-90 minutes, and the darker batter browns faster than the light one.
- The soda needs the acidSoda is the only chemical leavening in both parts, and it depends on the sour cream or buttermilk to react; in the dark part the molasses supplies acid as well. Cultured buttermilk works; substituting sweet cream or milk in the white part leaves the soda largely unreacted, and the cake will be flat and soapy-tasting.
- "Sour cream" in 1877This means raw cream left to clabber naturally — thinner and sharper than today's tub sour cream. Buttermilk, which the recipe offers as an alternative, is the closer match; if using modern sour cream, thin it slightly.
- Black pepper is not an errorA teaspoon of black pepper alongside the cloves and allspice is not unusual in nineteenth-century spice cakes. It reads as warmth rather than heat against the molasses and brown sugar. Leave it in.
- Marbling techniqueDrop alternating spoonfuls of the two batters into a greased and floured pan and draw a knife through once or twice in a figure-eight. More than that and the light batter disappears into the dark.
- Whites and yolksThe whites go into the light part, the yolks into the dark, so seven eggs serve both. Beat the whites to soft peaks and fold them in last; they are doing structural work the soda cannot do alone.
- Testing and keepingTest with a skewer at the deepest point, not the edge. Molasses cakes improve after a day wrapped tightly, and this one keeps a week.
Nineteenth-century marble cake had nothing to do with chocolate: the contrast was between a white batter of egg whites and refined sugar and a dark one built on molasses, brown sugar and heavy spicing, and the visual effect gave the cake its name. The pairing shows off both the expensive white sugar and the cook's ability to manage two batters and a single oven at once. The Home Cook Book was published in Toronto in 1877, its recipes credited to local women by name — Mrs. D. McCraney here — and sold in aid of the Hospital for Sick Children; it is generally counted among the earliest Canadian community cookbooks, and its recipes carry the assumptions of a kitchen where the cook already knew what a moderate oven felt like.