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Dessert

Lady Baltimore Cake

A layered cake with a fruit and nut filling made from raisins, pecans, and figs.

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 batter

  1. Cream the butter until very creamy using a wooden spoon.

  2. Gradually add the sugar while stirring and beating constantly.

  3. Add the milk alternately with the flour mixed with baking powder.

  4. Stir in the vanilla.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg whites until stiff.

Bake and fill

  1. Bake in three layers.

  2. Fill with fruit and nut filling.

  3. For the filling, combine 3 cups of sugar with 1 cup of boiling water.

  4. Bring to a boil.

  5. Cook until the syrup threads from a spoon.

  6. Pour the syrup gradually onto the beaten egg whites.

  7. Beat until nearly spreadable.

  8. Fold in the raisins, pecans, and figs.

  9. Continue beating until spreadable.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  5. Vanilla + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together782 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Creaming with sugar traps air, giving the cake a tender, fine-textured crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they lighten the batter and give the cake its rise and structure.
Pastry flour
Provides the starch and gluten structure that holds the layers together.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the layers rise.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and, in the filling, cooks into a syrup that sets the beaten whites into a spreadable filling.
Raisins, pecans, and figs
Add chewy texture, nutty crunch and fruity sweetness to the filling.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling syrup onto the egg whites. The syrup must be hot and poured in a thin, steady stream while beating, so it cooks the whites into a stable, glossy meringue-like filling instead of letting them collapse or turn grainy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, milk, flour, vanilla, 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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