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Dessert

Lady Baltimore Cake

A layered cake with butter, sugar, milk, flour, baking powder, vanilla, egg whites, raisins, nuts, figs, and a sugar‑water frosting.

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 batter

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

  2. Add the milk and mix well.

  3. Combine the flour and baking powder.

  4. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture.

  5. Stir in the vanilla.

  6. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

  7. Divide the batter into three layers.

Bake and make the filling

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

  2. Boil the sugar and water until it spins a thread.

  3. Gradually pour the syrup onto the beaten egg whites.

  4. Beat until thick.

  5. Fold in the chopped raisins, nuts, and figs.

Assemble

  1. Spread the frosting between the layers and on top 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  4. Vanilla + pecanstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,691 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 tender, rich crumb.
Egg whites
Beaten and folded in to lighten the batter and give structure as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the layers rise and turn light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, boiled into syrup, forms the frosting that sets the layers together.
Flour
Provides the main structure of the cake as it sets in the oven.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture to the frosting mixture.

The step that matters

Gradually pour the syrup onto the beaten egg whites. Pouring hot syrup in a slow thin stream while beating lets it cook the egg whites into a stable, glossy meringue. Pouring too fast can deflate the whites or leave them grainy.

Swap the pecans

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

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

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

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