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Dessert

Washington Pie

A two-layer cake made with eggs, sugar, flour, baking soda, milk, and flavored with lemon or vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Washington Pie

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 batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, beat 3 eggs with 1 cup sugar, 1 cup flour, and 1 teaspoon cream of tartar.

  3. Dissolve ⅓ teaspoon baking soda in 2 tablespoons milk and add to the mixture.

  4. Divide the batter into two round cake pans and bake until golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, combine 1 cup flour, 2 eggs, and 1 cup sugar in a bowl.

  2. Heat 1 pint milk until boiling, then pour it into the flour mixture while stirring.

  3. Add ½ teaspoon lemon or vanilla extract for flavor.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the cake and filling.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake and filling together as they set.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay tender.
Cream of tartar
Stabilises the egg whites and helps the batter rise evenly.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the batter to produce gas, helping the cake rise.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps the batter and filling come together smoothly.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling milk into the flour mixture while stirring. Adding hot milk all at once can lump the flour and eggs. Stirring constantly disperses the starch and gently cooks the eggs so the filling thickens smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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