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Dessert

Lady Baltimore Cake

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

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 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 until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the milk and mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder, then gradually add to the butter mixture.

  5. Fold in the egg whites and rose water.

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

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, beat the egg whites to stiff peaks.

  2. In a saucepan, boil the sugar and water until it threads.

  3. Slowly pour the sugar syrup over the beaten egg whites while continuously beating.

  4. Fold in the chopped raisins, pecans, and figs.

Assemble

  1. Spread the filling between each layer 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. 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
Creamed with sugar-free batter base, it adds fat for a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's layers together.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they lighten the batter and set the filling's airy texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the layers rise.
Sugar
Cooked with water into a syrup that sweetens and gives the filling its body.
Pecans
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavor to the filling.

The step that matters

Pouring the sugar syrup into the egg whites. The syrup must be pour slowly while beating constantly. Pouring too fast or stopping the mixer can deflate the whites or cook them unevenly, so the filling loses its stable, glossy foam.

Swap the pecans

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

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

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