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Dessert

Washington Pie

A baked apple pie with orange juice and sugar, using eggs, flour, butter, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

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.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in 1 cup of sugar, 1 cup of flour, and the softened butter.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda and cream of tartar in the milk, then add to the mixture.

Make the apple sauce

  1. In another bowl, combine the grated apple, orange juice, 1 cup of sugar, and 1 egg.

  2. Stir the apple mixture together and set it in boiling water to cook the egg slightly.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the apple sauce over the pie mixture and bake until set.

  2. Spread the sauce over the pie like you would on a jelly cake.

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. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 sponge together as it bakes.
Eggs
Set with heat to give structure and add moisture to the batter and sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb to the batter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the crumb tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to produce gas that makes the batter rise.
Tart apple
Adds moisture, acidity and fruit flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Lightly cooking the apple sauce in boiling water. Heat partly sets the egg in the apple mixture, so the sauce thickens slightly instead of running into the batter. Egg proteins firm up when heated, which gives the sauce body.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

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