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Dessert

Lady Baltimore Cake

A layered cake with a sweet syrup filling of sugar, water, raisins, nuts, 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a rather hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

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

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

  3. Nuts + pecanstop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together121 recipes

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

  4. Nuts + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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 crumb and rich flavour.
Egg whites
Whipped to hold air, giving the cake lift and a light, open structure.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the layers rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, cooked into syrup, forms the glossy filling that holds the fruit and nuts.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling syrup until it threads. Sugar syrup must reach the right concentration to set into a glossy, spreadable filling. Undercooked syrup stays runny, while overcooked syrup turns hard and grainy when it meets the egg whites.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

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