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Dessert

Egoless Layer Cake or Washington Pie

An eggless cake made with sour milk, baking soda, flour, and topped with powdered sugar frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cocoa and vanilla work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 357 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Egoless Layer Cake or Washington Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter with the salt.

  3. Stir in the sour milk and baking soda, then gradually add the flour and mix until smooth.

  4. Pour the batter into two greased cake pans.

Bake and frost

  1. Bake in the hot oven until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. For the frosting, mix the powdered sugar with sweet cream until smooth, then add cocoa and vanilla extract and mix well.

  3. Spread the frosting on the cooled cake layers.

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. Cocoa + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together357 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake layers together as they bake.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to lift and lighten the batter.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps give it a tender texture and browning.
Powdered sugar
Forms the sweet base of the frosting, giving it a smooth texture.

The step that matters

Stirring in the sour milk and baking soda. The baking soda must react with the acid in the sour milk while the batter is mixed and baked; if the batter sits too long or the ingredients are not combined promptly, less gas forms and the cake may rise poorly.

Swap the cocoa

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

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

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