Name: Washington Pie
Ingredients: 1 lb raisins; ½ lb currants; 2 oz baking soda; Spices to taste; Water as needed; Pie crust for lining; Water-icing for topping

Why it works: Raisin and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Washington Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).
In a bowl, combine raisins, currants, baking soda, spices, and enough water to achieve a thick consistency.
Line a bread pan with pie crust.
Fill the crust with the mixture.

Bake and serve

Bake in the preheated oven until done.
Once baked, ice the top with water-icing and cut into squares.

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.

Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,180 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Raisins: Provide sweetness and chewy bulk that forms the filling.
Currants: Add concentrated sweetness and tartness to the fruit filling.
Baking soda: Reacts with the fruit and moisture to lighten and loosen the filling as it bakes.

“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.