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Dessert

Washington Cake

A buttery, sweet cake flavored with brandy and mace, made with all-purpose flour, sugar, butter, eggs, cream, and pearlash.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter until smooth.

  2. Add sugar and mix until well combined.

  3. Beat in eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Gradually add flour and mix until just combined.

  5. Stir in dissolved pearlash and ground mace.

Bake

  1. Pour batter into small tins, filling them only halfway.

  2. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake's crumb once baked.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and, creamed with butter, helps give a tender texture.
Unsalted butter
Adds richness and fat that makes the crumb tender.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help bind the batter.
Pearlash
Reacts to release gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.
Heavy cream
Adds moisture and carries the dissolved pearlash into the batter.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour and mix until just combined. Once flour is added, overmixing develops gluten, which makes the cake tough and dense. Stopping as soon as the flour disappears keeps the crumb tender.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

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