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Dessert

Washington Pie

A layered cake with apple jelly and lemon, baked in jelly cake tins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 cake

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

  2. Cream together 1 ½ cups sugar and ½ cup butter until light and fluffy.

  3. Add ½ cup sweet milk and 3 eggs, mixing well.

  4. Gradually add 2 ½ cups flour and 2 teaspoons baking powder, stirring until combined.

  5. Divide the batter into three layers and bake in jelly cake tins until golden.

Make the jelly

  1. While the cake cools, pare and grate 2 large apples.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the grated apples, 1 cup sugar, grated lemon rind, and lemon juice.

  3. Steam the mixture until it forms a jelly, then remove from heat and stir in the yolk of 1 egg.

Assemble

  1. Once both the cake and jelly are cold, layer them together.

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

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

  2. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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
Creams with the sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the cake.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the layers rise.
Apples
Provide pectin and fruit flavour that thicken the filling into a jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the jelly set into a thick, spreadable consistency.

The step that matters

Steam the apple mixture until it forms a jelly. Apples set into a jelly only when enough water evaporates and the pectin and sugar concentrate. Stopping too early leaves a runny filling, while overcooking can make it stiff and dull in flavour.

Swap the apple

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

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

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