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Lord Baltimore Cake
1 cupful sugar 3/4 cupful Crisco 1/2 cupful cold water 1 teaspoonful vanilla extract 2 1/2 cupfuls flour 2 1/2 teaspoonfuls baking powder 1/2 teaspoonful salt 6 yolks of eggs Filling or Frosting 1 cupful sugar 1/2 cupful boiling water 2 whites of eggs Pinch cream of tartar 1 teaspoonful vanilla extract 1/2 cupful chopped raisins 1/2 cupful chopped nut meats 5 chopped figs For cake. Cream Crisco and sugar together. Sift together three times dry ingredients and add alternately with water. Add vanilla, beat mixture well, then fold in beaten yolks of eggs. Divide into two Criscoed and floured layer cake tins and bake in moderate oven twenty-five minutes. For filling. Put sugar and water into saucepan, stir till boiling, add cream of tartar, then boil until it forms soft ball when tried in cold water, or 240 degree F.; pour on to stiffly beaten whites of eggs, pouring in steady stream and very slowly, adding while beating vanilla, raisins, nuts, and figs, beat until thick and divide between and on top of cake.
Sufficient for one large layer cake.
A yolk-rich butterless layer cake finished with a boiled meringue frosting full of dried fruit and nuts. The frosting is the fussy part; the cake itself is a plain quick method.
- Moderate ovenAround 350F is the usual modern reading of "moderate." The recipe does not give a tin size; twenty-five minutes suits two shallow layer tins, and it is worth testing a few minutes early, since a shortening batter with no butter browns less obviously.
- Crisco and "Criscoed" tinsThe book was published to promote Crisco, so it appears throughout. Modern all-vegetable shortening is a close substitute, though it has been reformulated since; 3/4 cup is 1 1/2 sticks' worth by volume. "Criscoed and floured" simply means greased and floured. Butter can be substituted for flavor.
- The hinge: the syrup temperature240F soft ball is the whole frosting. Much under that and it is likely to stay loose and slide off the layers; taken well past it, the frosting stiffens and can turn grainy before you can spread it. A thermometer helps; the recipe has you stir only until it boils.
- Pour slowly, onto already stiff whitesThe whites must be at stiff peaks before the syrup goes in, and the syrup must go down the side of the bowl in a thin thread while the beating continues. Dumped in at once it cooks the whites into threads. A stand mixer makes this straightforward; by hand it needs two people.
- Fruit goes in last and cool-ishFruit goes in last -- the recipe adds the raisins, figs and nuts while the meringue is still being beaten, then beats until thick. If you prefer, let the meringue cool a little first so the fruit does not weep into it.
- Six yolks, and the whitesThe cake uses six yolks and the frosting only two whites, so you will have four whites over. They keep a week refrigerated or freeze well.
- Nut meatsUnspecified here; pecans or walnuts are the usual choice for this family of cakes, pecans especially in its Southern associations.
- YieldThe recipe says one large layer cake. The frosting is spread between the layers and over the top only, so the sides are left bare.
Lord Baltimore cake is often said to be the deliberate counterpart to Lady Baltimore cake: where the Lady uses egg whites for a white crumb, the Lord uses the leftover yolks, a thrifty pairing traditionally explained as letting a cook bake both from one dozen eggs. Lady Baltimore is generally traced to Charleston, South Carolina, and its name was popularized by Owen Wister's 1906 novel Lady Baltimore, in which the cake figures at a tea room; the Lord version is generally said to have followed as a companion. Its appearance here, made with shortening rather than butter, reflects the book's purpose — A Calendar of Dinners was issued to promote Crisco, then a new hydrogenated vegetable fat, and recasting established party cakes in the new shortening was the surest way to argue it belonged in a respectable kitchen.