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Dessert

Frosting for Lady Baltimore Cake

A sweet frosting made with sugar, boiling water, egg whites, figs, raisins, and nuts for Lady Baltimore Cake.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and raisin work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 737 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Frosting for Lady Baltimore Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the frosting

  1. Cook the sugar and boiling water in a saucepan until it spins a long hair.

  2. Pour the hot mixture in a fine stream over the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  3. Add the chopped figs and raisins, then beat all together until well combined.

Assemble and rest

  1. When the frosting is cold, spread it between the layers and on top of the cake.

  2. Allow the cake to stand overnight for best results.

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. Fig + raisintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

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

  2. Nuts + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + figtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,241 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the frosting its light, airy structure.
Granulated sugar
Cooked into a syrup that sets with the whites and gives the frosting its sweetness.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and natural sweetness to the frosting.
Figs
Add chewy texture and fruity sweetness to the frosting.

The step that matters

Pour the hot syrup in a fine stream. Pouring the hot syrup slowly while beating the whites lets the heat cook the egg proteins gradually, producing a smooth, stable foam rather than scrambled or deflated egg whites.

Swap the nuts

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, fig, 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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