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Dessert

Washington Pie

A pie made from a sugar‑egg‑flour mixture baked in a pie dish, topped with a thickened milk‑sugar‑flour cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. 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 sponge

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

  2. In a bowl, mix 1 cup sugar, 2 eggs, 1½ cups flour, 4 tablespoons water, ½ teaspoon baking soda, and 1 teaspoon cream of tartar until smooth.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pie dish and bake until set.

Make the cream and assemble

  1. For the cream, combine 2 cups milk, 1 cup sugar, and 2 tablespoons flour in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir until thickened, then remove from heat.

  3. Fill the pie with the cream while warm and let it cool in a cool place.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Provide structure and richness as they set the batter into a light, tender sponge.
Flour
Forms the structure of the sponge and thickens the cream as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream, which thickens as it heats with the flour.
Sugar
Sweetens the sponge and the cream, and helps the cream thicken with the flour.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to produce gas that helps the sponge rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with baking soda, helping the sponge rise and stay tender.

The step that matters

Stir the cream until thickened. Flour thickens milk only when it is stirred over heat long enough for the starch to swell. Stopping too early leaves a thin filling that will not hold between the layers, while overcooking can scorch the milk on the bottom of the saucepan.

“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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