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Dessert

Lady Baltimore Cake

A layered cake with butter, powdered sugar, milk, egg whites, flour, baking powder, rose water, sugar syrup, raisins, walnuts, 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 moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the cake

  1. Cream the butter with the powdered sugar until smooth.

  2. Work in the milk gradually.

  3. Add the beaten egg whites and fold in the flour sifted with baking powder.

  4. Stir in the rose water.

  5. Bake in layer pans at 350°F (175°C).

Make the filling

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

  2. Pour the syrup gradually over the beaten egg whites and beat until stiff.

  3. Mix in the raisins, walnuts or pecans, and chopped figs.

Assemble

  1. 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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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 to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Egg whites
Beaten to foam, they lift the batter and give the cake its light structure.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the layers rise in the oven.
Granulated sugar
Cooked with water into a syrup that sets the filling and adds sweetness.
Figs
Add chopped fruit body and natural sweetness to the filling.

The step that matters

Pour the syrup gradually over the beaten egg whites. Hot syrup poured in a thin, steady stream cooks the whites gently into a stable, glossy meringue. Pouring it in one go can deflate the foam or leave lumps of cooked egg.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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