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Dessert

Washington Cream Pie

A custard pie with a sweet milk and flour crust, topped with whipped cream.

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 Cream 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 batter

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

  2. In a bowl, mix 1 cup sugar, 1 cup sweet milk, 1 tablespoon butter, 1 egg, 2½ cups flour, and 2 teaspoons baking powder, then flavor the batter with Royce's vanilla.

  3. Pour the batter into two cake pans or one pan to split later.

Bake and make the filling

  1. Bake until golden brown.

  2. For the filling, bring 1 quart milk to a boil.

  3. Add ½ cup sugar, 2 eggs, and butter the size of a walnut, then flavor with Royce's vanilla and stir until combined.

Serve

  1. Serve the pie with whipped cream on top.

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. Butter + creamtop 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
Bind the batter and thicken the filling as they set with heat.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake crumb as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and turn light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the cake and filling.
Milk
Provides moisture and liquid that hydrates the flour and cooks into the filling.

The step that matters

Stir the egg filling as it thickens. Eggs in hot milk can scramble or curdle if overheated or left unstirred. Keeping the mixture moving and at a gentle heat lets the eggs thicken it smoothly into a custard.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

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