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Dessert

Lady Baltimore Cake

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the cake

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

  2. Cream the butter and gradually add the sugar, beating continuously.

  3. Mix in the milk and rosewater.

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

  5. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites gently.

  6. Divide the batter into three layer cake pans and bake until golden.

Make the filling and assemble

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

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

  3. Add the chopped raisins, pecans, and figs to the icing.

  4. Ice the top and sides of the cake with the filling.

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. Pecans + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together93 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake once its proteins set in the oven.
Egg whites
Whipped to foam that lifts the batter and gives the cake its light texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to make the layers rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps tenderize its crumb while creaming.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and liquid that hydrates the flour into batter.

The step that matters

Pour the syrup over the stiffly beaten egg whites, stirring constantly. Hot syrup must be poured in a thin stream while beating so it cooks the egg whites into a stable, glossy meringue; pouring too fast or stopping stirring can cause the whites to collapse or scramble.

Swap the pecans

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

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

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