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Dessert

Washington Pie

A layered apple cake with a sweet jelly topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 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. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the sweet milk and eggs, mixing well.

  4. Gradually add the flour and baking powder, stirring until combined.

  5. Divide the batter into three layers and bake in jelly cake tins until golden.

Make the apple jelly

  1. While the cake cools, pare and grate the apples.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the grated apples, 1 cup of sugar, lemon rind, and lemon juice.

  3. Cook on the stove until it forms a jelly, then remove from heat.

  4. Stir in the egg yolk once the jelly cools.

Assemble

  1. Once both the cake and jelly are cold, layer them together.

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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 add structure and richness as the cake sets in the oven.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds tenderness and a rich flavour to the cake.
Flour
Forms the cake's main structure once its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the layers rise and turn light.
Apples
Cook down into the jelly filling, providing body, moisture and fruity flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and the jelly, and helps the jelly set as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cooking the apple jelly until it sets. Apples contain natural pectin, and the jelly thickens only when cooked long enough with sugar and acid. Undercooked filling stays runny and soaks the layers, while overcooking makes it stiff and sticky.

Swap the apple

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