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Dessert

Washington Pie

A custard pie with a sweet batter crust and a thickened milk custard filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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. In a bowl, cream together the sugar, butter, and egg.

  3. Add the sweet milk, cream of tartar, baking soda, and flour; mix well.

  4. Divide the batter between two greased cake pans.

  5. Bake the batter until golden.

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk or cream in a saucepan for the custard.

  2. Beat together the sugar, egg, and corn starch in a separate bowl.

  3. Stir the mixture into the boiling milk.

  4. Cook the custard until thickened.

  5. Flavor the custard to taste before serving.

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 + buttertop 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 + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  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

Eggs
Bind the batter and enrich the custard, adding structure and richness as they set.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake once its proteins set during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor in the cake.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas that lightens the cake.
Corn starch
Thickens the custard as its starch granules swell when heated with liquid.

The step that matters

Stir the custard mixture into the boiling milk. Adding the egg and starch mixture to boiling milk can cause the egg to scramble or lumps to form if stirred poorly. Keep stirring constantly so the starch thickens smoothly and the egg sets evenly.

“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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