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Dessert

Washington Cream Pie

A pie with a batter of sugar, sweet milk, butter, egg, flour, baking powder, vanilla, and a creamy filling of milk, sugar, eggs, butter, vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Washington Cream 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the cake

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

  2. In a bowl, mix sugar, sweet milk, butter, egg, flour, baking powder, and vanilla until smooth.

  3. Pour the batter into two greased cake pans or one pan to split later.

  4. Bake until golden brown, about 25-30 minutes.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, bring 1 quart of milk to a boil.

  2. Stir in ½ cup sugar, 2 eggs, and walnut-sized butter until combined.

  3. Add vanilla to taste.

Assemble and serve

  1. Fill the cooled layers with the cream mixture.

  2. Top with whipped cream.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Flour
Forms the cake's structure as its proteins set during baking.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the cake and thicken the custard filling.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavour in the cake and filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and filling and helps browning in the cake.
Milk
Adds moisture to the batter and forms the body of the custard filling.

The step that matters

Bringing the filling milk to a boil before adding eggs. Eggs thicken as their proteins set with heat, so the mixture must be stirred carefully to avoid curdling or lumps while it thickens into a smooth filling.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

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