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Dessert

Washington Pie

A sweet cake with marmalade filling, made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, cream, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. 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. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the cream, baking soda, and well-beaten eggs; mix well.

  4. Stir in the flour until fully combined.

  5. Pour the batter into round tin pans or a wooden box cover.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes until golden and a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. Let the cakes cool, then spread marmalade or jelly on one layer.

  3. Top with another cake layer and frost if desired.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Creaming with sugar traps air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps create a light, fluffy structure.
Eggs
Provide structure as they set and add richness and moisture to the batter.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidic ingredients to release gas, helping the cake rise and brown.
Cream
Adds moisture and fat, producing a tender, rich crumb.

The step that matters

Creaming the butter and sugar. Beating softened butter with sugar until light and fluffy traps air bubbles that expand in the oven. Under-creaming leaves a dense cake, so beat until the mixture visibly lightens.

“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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