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Dessert

Lady Baltimore Cake

A layered cake with a sweet milk batter, rose water, and a fig, raisin, and nut filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Lady Baltimore Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Cream the butter with a wooden spoon, then gradually add the sugar while beating continuously.

  3. Mix in the milk and rose water.

  4. Sift the baking powder into the flour and add it to the mixture.

  5. Gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Bake the layers

  1. Divide the batter into three layer cake tins and bake until golden.

Make and add the filling

  1. For the filling, dissolve the granulated sugar in boiling water and cook until it shreds.

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

  3. Add the raisins, nuts, and figs to the mixture and spread between the cake layers.

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

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

  2. Milk + figtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Nuts + figtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together154 recipes

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

  5. Flour + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Stiffly beaten whites add lift and structure to the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the layers rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a fine, even texture when creamed.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup over the egg whites. Hot syrup partly cooks and stabilizes the whipped whites, so it must be poured slowly while stirring constantly. Pouring too fast or stopping can deflate the foam or leave cooked lumps.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

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

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