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Dessert

Washington Pie

A sweet pie with a crust and a filling of milk, sugar, egg, flour, coconut, raisins, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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.

Bake the crusts

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

  2. In a bowl, mix sugar, flour, water, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

  3. Divide the mixture into 2 pie tins.

  4. Bake the pie tins until golden.

Make the custard filling

  1. For the filling, combine milk, sugar, egg, flour, and coconut in a saucepan.

  2. Cook the filling over medium heat until thickened.

  3. Fill the pie crusts while warm.

Make and bake the crumbles

  1. For the crumbles, mix raisins, sugar, lemon juice, lemon rind, and butter.

  2. Dissolve corn starch in water.

  3. Add the dissolved corn starch to the mixture along with beaten eggs.

  4. Roll out pastry crust to 4-inch squares.

  5. Fill the squares with the mixture.

  6. Fold over the crust.

  7. Bake until golden.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  5. Coconut + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Builds the structure of the crust and sets as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help thicken the filling as they set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crusts brown as they bake.
Corn starch
Thickens the raisin mixture so it holds together when baked.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to produce gas that lifts the crust.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and brightness that balances the sweetness of the filling.

The step that matters

Cook the filling over medium heat until thickened. Starch thickens as it heats, while eggs in the custard can curdle or scramble if the heat is too high or they are overcooked. Stir steadily and remove from heat once thick.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, cream, milk, egg, coconut, raisin. 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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