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Dessert

Washington Pie

A sweet cake with jelly filling, made from butter, sugar, milk, flour, eggs, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. 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. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Stir in the milk.

  4. Sift together the flour and baking powder.

  5. Gradually add the sifted flour mixture to the batter.

  6. Divide the batter into two greased cake pans.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

  2. Once cooled, layer the cakes with jelly between them.

  3. Dust with powdered sugar on top, or use cream filling.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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. Flour + eggtop 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
Provides fat that adds richness and a tender texture to the crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, when creamed with butter, helps trap air for a lighter cake.
Eggs
Add structure and binding, and enrich the batter as they set during baking.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the cakes to rise and become light.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a smooth, pourable consistency.

The step that matters

Gradually adding the flour mixture. Once flour is added, overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which can make the cake tough and dense. Add the flour in portions and mix only until just combined.

“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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