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Dessert

Lady Baltimore Cake

A sponge cake with rose water, raisins, pecans, figs, and a sugar syrup frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lady Baltimore Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cake

  1. Cream the butter and gradually beat in the sugar.

  2. Sift the flour and baking powder, then add to the butter mixture, alternating with the milk and rose water.

  3. Beat thoroughly and gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Make the frosting

  1. For the frosting, dissolve the sugar in boiling water and cook until it spins a thread three inches long.

  2. Pour the syrup in a fine stream over the whipped egg whites, beating constantly.

  3. Set aside some frosting for the outside of the cake.

  4. To the remaining frosting, add the chopped raisins, pecans, and figs.

Assemble and decorate

  1. Spread the filling between the cake layers.

  2. Decorate the outside with halved nuts or candied cherries.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + pecanstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,416 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with the sugar to give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in to lighten the batter and give it structure as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, cooked to a syrup, forms the frosting base.
Figs
Add chewy texture and fruity sweetness to the filling.

The step that matters

Pour the syrup in a fine stream over the whipped egg whites, beating constantly.. Hot syrup must be poured slowly while beating so it cooks the egg white foam into a stable, glossy frosting rather than scrambling or deflating it.

Swap the pecans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, flour, milk, rose, egg, raisin):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Pecansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, milk, rose, egg, raisin. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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