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Dessert

Washington Cake

A moist cake with currants, raisins, citron, and nutmeg baked at 300°F for 2 hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Washington Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and brown sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the beaten yolks of the eggs, sweet milk, and sifted flour mixed with baking powder.

  3. Reserve a little flour to mix with the fruit.

  4. Fold in the currants, raisins, citron, and grated nutmeg.

  5. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared cake pan and bake at 300°F (150°C) for 2 hours.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and add richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whites beaten in lighten and help the cake rise.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to make the cake rise.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the cake and adds moisture and a caramel flavor.
Currants
Add fruit flavor and chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air bubbles that help lift the batter. Folding gently keeps those bubbles intact, so the cake stays light instead of deflating and turning dense.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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

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