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Dessert

Lady Baltimore Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, flour, water, baking powder, egg whites, almond and vanilla extracts, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,961 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Lady Baltimore Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add ⅓ cup of the water and 1 cup of the flour, then beat thoroughly.

  3. Add the second cup of flour and continue beating.

  4. Sift the baking powder into the last cup of flour and add it along with the remaining water.

  5. Flavor the mixture with almond and vanilla extracts.

Fold and bake

  1. Carefully cut and fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  2. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until done.

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. Almond + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Stiffly beaten whites trap air, giving the cake lightness and structure as it bakes.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that provides the cake's main structure.
Butter
Adds fat for tender texture and a rich flavor.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps tenderize its crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise in the oven.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Egg whites hold air only when stiffly beaten, and overmixing or stirring rather than gently folding deflates them. Deflated whites leave the cake dense and short on rise.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillathe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, egg, almond. 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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