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Dessert

Lady Baltimore Cake

A layered cake with butter, sugar, flour, milk, egg whites, almond extract, walnuts, raisins, and a sugar syrup frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 993 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. 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 cake

  1. Cream the butter and gradually add the sugar.

  2. Mix and sift the flour and baking powder, then add alternately with the milk to the butter mixture.

  3. Add the almond extract and the beaten egg whites.

  4. Bake in two deep layer cake pans at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

Make the filling and frosting

  1. For the filling and frosting, mix 4 cups sugar and ½ teaspoon cream of tartar with 1 cup cold water in a saucepan.

  2. Bring to a boil and cook until the mixture drops from a wooden spoon like honey.

  3. Add 1 cup of this syrup to the beaten egg whites and beat constantly.

  4. Return the remaining syrup to the heat and cook until it spins a thread.

  5. Remove from heat and pour over the egg mixture, beating constantly until thickened.

  6. Fold in the walnut pieces, raisins, and vanilla.

Assemble

  1. Spread the filling between the layers and over the top and sides of the cake.

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 + walnuttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together993 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with the sugar to give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Egg whites
Beaten to foam, they lighten the batter and set the frosting into a stable, airy texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the layers rise and stay light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, cooked into syrup, forms the body of the frosting.
Walnut meats
Add crunch and nutty flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Cooking the syrup to the right stage. Sugar syrup must reach the exact stage described, honey-like for the first cup and thread-stage for the rest, because the sugar concentration determines whether the frosting sets soft and glossy or runs or turns grainy. Pouring hot syrup into the egg whites while beating keeps the foam stable.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Pistachiofits better
  2. Hazelnutfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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