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Dessert

Washington Pie

A sweet cake with marmalade filling, made from sugar, butter, cream, eggs, flour, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 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 batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until smooth.

  3. Add the cream, baking soda, and beaten eggs; mix well.

  4. Stir in the flour until fully combined.

  5. Pour the batter into round tin pans or a wooden box cover.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. Let the cakes cool, then place one on a plate.

  3. Spread a thick layer of marmalade or jelly on top.

  4. Top with the second cake and frost if desired.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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 as the cakes set in the oven.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together once baked.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, and helps the creamed batter hold air.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender crumb when creamed with butter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter's acidity to produce gas that helps the cakes rise.

The step that matters

Checking for doneness with a toothpick. Baking for the full range can over- or under-bake the cakes, since oven performance varies. A toothpick inserted in the center that comes out clean shows the cake's structure has set and it is no longer wet batter, which keeps the layers moist rather than dry or gummy.

“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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