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Dessert

Washington Cake

A layered apple cake with a sweet filling, baked in jelly pans.

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

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. In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the sweet milk and mix well.

  4. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately, then fold them into the mixture.

  5. Sift together the flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda, then gradually add to the wet ingredients.

  6. Pour the batter into jelly pans and bake until golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, combine the grated apples, lemon or orange zest, juice, sugar, and egg in a saucepan.

  2. Boil the mixture until thickened, then let it cool.

Assemble and finish

  1. Spread the filling between the layers of cake, stack them, and ice the top layer with common icing.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 tender, fine texture.
Eggs
Whites are beaten to add lift and structure; yolks add richness and moisture.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Cream of tartar
Stabilises the egg whites and works with baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic ingredients to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Apples
Add moisture and tartness to the filling, balancing the sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil the filling until thickened. The egg and grated apple must be cooked until thick enough to hold between the layers. Undercooked egg stays runny and makes the filling soft and unstable, while overcooking can make it grainy or scorch on the bottom of the saucepan.

Swap the apple

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