Skip to main content
Dessert

Washington Cake

A moist cake made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, milk, brandy, nutmeg, cloves, currants, raisins, and pearl ash.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Washington Cake

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Stir in the milk and brandy.

  5. Combine the flour, nutmeg, cloves, currants, and raisins in a separate bowl.

  6. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing until just combined.

  7. Dissolve the pearl ash in the brandy and fold it into the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for about 1 hour or until a toothpick comes out clean.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavor.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure as its proteins set during baking.
Granulated sugar
Creams with butter for air, adds sweetness, and helps the crust brown.
Pearl ash
Acts as a leavening agent, releasing gas to help the cake rise.

The step that matters

Gradually adding the dry ingredients. Mixing only until just combined keeps gluten development low, so the cake stays tender rather than tough. Overmixing after the flour goes in makes the crumb dense and chewy.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, milk, egg, brandy, nutmeg. 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.

More washington cake recipes

Martha 6 See all 69 →

You might also like

Brandy PeachesBrandy Peaches68 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipes