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Dessert

Lady Baltimore Cake

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

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

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 and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the flour, sweet milk, egg whites, baking powder, and rose water. Mix until smooth.

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

Make the filling and assemble

  1. For the filling, boil the sugar and water until it threads.

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

  3. Fold in the raisins, pecans, and figs.

  4. Spread the filling between the layers of 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. 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 sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake's layers together as it bakes.
Egg whites
Whipped to foam, they add lift and structure to the cake and the fluffy filling.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the layers rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, boiled to a syrup, sets 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 added slowly while stirring constantly. Pouring too fast or without stirring can deflate the whipped whites or leave them lumpy and cooked unevenly, so the filling does not become smooth and stable.

Swap the pecans

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

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

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