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Calumet Lady Baltimore Cake
3/4 cup butter 2 cups sugar 1 cup milk 1 teaspoon lemon or rose flavoring Cream butter and beat in sugar gradually. Sift together baking powder and flour 3½ cups flour 31/2 level teaspoons Calumet Baking Powder Whites of 6 eggs, beaten well three times, and add to butter and sugar alternately with milk and flavoring. Add egg whites last. Bake in three layers, and use following icing: 3 cups granulated sugar 1 cup boiling water Whites of 3 eggs 1 cup chopped raisins 1 cup chopped nut meats 1/2 cup chopped citron 1/2 cup candied cherries cut fine 2 tablespoons lemon juice Stir the sugar and water until the sugar is dissolved, then let boil without stirring until the syrup will thread from a spoon, pour upon whites of eggs, beaten well, beating constantly all the time. Continue beating until icing is cold; add fruit and spread on cake. (See illustration, page 21.) 2 cups pastry flour
A white butter cake in three layers, finished with a boiled meringue icing loaded with fruit and nuts. The ingredient list and the method were set side by side in the original book, so read the quantities as one list before you begin.
- Oven temperatureNo temperature is given, as was normal for a promotional pamphlet of this era. Bake the layers in a moderate oven, 350F, in three greased 9-inch round pans, 22-28 minutes, until a tester comes out clean.
- FlourThe recipe calls simply for 3 1/2 cups 'flour'; a soft cake or pastry flour is the likely intent, not modern bread flour. With today's all-purpose flour the crumb will be tougher; substituting cake flour cup for cup, plus an extra tablespoon or two, is closer to the intent.
- Baking powderCalumet was a double-acting powder (sodium aluminium sulfate with acid calcium phosphate), so no substitution is needed. At 3 1/2 level teaspoons to 3 1/2 cups flour the proportion works out at one teaspoon per cup, at the upper end of current practice; cutting to three teaspoons if you dislike a metallic aftertaste is a matter of taste.
- The hinge: syrup stageEverything depends on boiling the icing syrup until it will thread from the spoon, roughly 230-235F on a thermometer. Under-cooked syrup gives a frosting that weeps and slides off the layers; taken well past soft ball, around 245F, it sets hard and cracks while you spread it.
- Adding the syrupPour the hot syrup into the beaten whites in a thin, steady stream against the side of the bowl, not all at once, and keep the beater running throughout. A stand mixer does in six or seven minutes what the original expected of a wrist.
- Egg whites in the icingThe hot syrup cooks the whites only partially. If you are serving anyone who should avoid lightly cooked egg, use pasteurised whites.
- Citron and candied cherriesCitron is the candied peel of the citron, a thick-rinded citrus fruit; it is still sold at holiday baking counters and by mail, and candied lemon peel is the usual stand-in. Chop both fine and toss them with a spoonful of the sugar so they disperse rather than clumping.
- YieldA three-layer 9-inch cake, 12 to 16 servings. The fruited icing firms up considerably overnight, so assemble the day you plan to serve or slice with a hot knife.
Lady Baltimore cake owes its name and its fame to Owen Wister's 1906 novel Lady Baltimore, set in Charleston, where the narrator eats a fruit-and-nut-filled white cake at a small bakery; the cake is generally traced to Charleston bakers of that period, and Alicia Rhett Mayberry is traditionally credited as the woman who served it to Wister. Within a few years the recipe had spread through American newspapers and, as here, through the recipe booklets that baking powder companies gave away by the million. Those booklets were advertising first and cookery second, which is why the leavening is named brand and quantity while the oven temperature is left to the cook's judgement of a wood or gas range. The boiled icing, made by whipping hot sugar syrup into egg whites, was the showpiece technique of the turn-of-the-century American cake table, prized because it stayed glossy and white in a way that a simple sugar-and-water glaze never could.