Skip to main content
Dessert

Lady Baltimore Cake

A layered sponge cake with a sweet syrup filling of raisins and pecans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream the butter, then gradually add the sugar while beating continuously.

  3. Mix in the milk and flavoring.

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

  5. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

  6. Divide the batter into three layers and bake until golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, dissolve 3 cups of sugar in 1 cup of water and boil until it threads.

  2. Slowly pour the syrup over the stiffly beaten egg whites, stirring continuously.

  3. Add the chopped raisins and pecans to the filling.

Assemble

  1. Fill the layers with the filling.

  2. Ice 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. Butter + pecanstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,416 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 the sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as the batter sets in the oven.
Egg whites
Beaten and folded in to lighten the batter and help it rise and set.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the layers rise in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, in the filling, cooks into a syrup that binds the filling.

The step that matters

Pouring the syrup over the egg whites. The syrup must be hot and poured slowly while stirring constantly, so it cooks the egg whites gently and makes a smooth, stable filling instead of lumps or a runny mixture.

Swap the pecans

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

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

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

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes