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Dessert

Washington Pie

A baked pie with lemon-flavored batter topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 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 cakes

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

  2. In a bowl, beat 6 eggs and mix in 2 cups of sugar, 1½ cups of flour, 1 teaspoon of baking powder, and lemon flavoring.

  3. Pour the batter into 9 jelly pans and bake until golden.

Make the cream

  1. In a saucepan, heat 1 pint of milk and add 1 cup of sugar, butter, and ½ cup of flour while boiling.

  2. Stir in the yolks of 3 eggs and vanilla flavoring.

Top and brown

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff, then fold in 3 tablespoons of powdered sugar.

  2. Spread the meringue over the cooled pies and brown in the oven.

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. Cream + buttertop 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

Eggs
Whole eggs and yolks set the cake structure and enrich the cream.
Flour
Provides structure to the cake and thickens the cream.
Sugar
Sweetens the cakes and cream and helps the cakes brown.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cakes rise and stay light.
Milk
Forms the base of the cream, adding moisture and richness.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the cream.

The step that matters

Cooking the cream while boiling. Flour thickens the milk only when it is fully heated and stirred, so the cream can set properly. Adding egg yolks to a very hot mixture afterward needs care, since too much heat can scramble them and leave the cream lumpy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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