Skip to main content
Dessert

Lady Baltimore Cake

A layered cake with a sweet syrup filling of pecans, raisins, and figs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream the sugar and butter together until smooth.

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, stirring vigorously after each addition.

  4. Mix in half of the flour, then the water, and finally the remaining flour with baking powder.

  5. Flavor the batter with vanilla.

Bake

  1. Divide the batter into two three-layer cake pans and bake until golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, dissolve 3 cups of sugar in 1 cup of boiling water and cook until it threads.

  2. Pour the syrup over the well-beaten egg whites, stirring constantly.

  3. Fold in the chopped pecans, raisins, and finely chopped figs.

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. Vanilla + figtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together324 recipes

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

  3. Pecans + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together93 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Raisin + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

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

  5. Vanilla + pecanstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,691 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and adds fat for a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps give a fine, tender crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help bind the batter as it sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Figs
Add chewy texture and natural sweetness to the filling.

The step that matters

Cooking the sugar syrup until it threads. Sugar syrup must reach the right concentration to set properly. Undercooked syrup stays runny, while overcooked syrup turns hard and brittle when it meets the egg whites and fruit.

Swap the pecans

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, flour, egg, vanilla, raisin, fig. 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.

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes