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Dessert

Lady Baltimore Cake

A layered cake with butter, sugar, flour, milk, egg whites, flavoring, and a raisin, nut, and fig filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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

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 cake batter

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

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the milk and sifted flour mixed with baking powder to the creamed mixture.

  4. Stir in the flavoring and then gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  5. Pour the batter into greased layer cake pans and bake until golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, boil 2 cups of sugar with ½ cup of water until it threads.

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

  3. Fold in the chopped raisins, nut meats, and sliced figs.

Assemble

  1. Spread the filling between the cake layers and frost the top.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Creams with sugar to trap air and adds richness and tender texture to the crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped to foam, they give the cake its light, airy structure as they set in the oven.
Flour
Its proteins set during baking to form the cake's main structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the layers rise and become light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, when boiled into syrup, forms the body of the filling.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to the filling.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup over the egg whites. The syrup must be poured in a thin stream while stirring constantly. Hot sugar syrup cooks the egg whites gently into a stable, glossy meringue; pouring too fast or without stirring can leave lumps of scrambled white or a filling that fails to hold together.

Swap the fig

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figthe original
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonfits less well

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