Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. 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. 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.
Prepare
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Beat the sugar and eggs together until well combined.
Sift in the flour and baking powder, and mix until smooth.
Flavor the batter to taste.
Bake and assemble
Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake until golden, about 25-30 minutes.
Once cooled, spread raspberry jam between the layers.
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.
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + raspberrytop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,262 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Sugar + raspberrytop 21% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,101 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
- Eggs
- Provide structure and help trap air, giving the cake its set and lift.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps create a tender, fine crumb with the eggs.
- Flour
- Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set in the oven.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas when heated, helping the layers rise.
- Raspberry jam
- Adds fruity sweetness and moisture between the layers.
The step that matters
Spread the jam only after the layers have cooled. Warm cake layers soften and absorb jam unevenly, and hot jam can melt the crumb and slide off. Cooled layers hold the filling neatly.
Swap the raspberry
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, flour):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Lemonfits better
- Raspberrythe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, flour. 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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