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Dessert

Washington Cake

A buttery, sweet cake with currants, raisins, citron, and nutmeg baked at 300°F for two 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, then fold in the currants, raisins, citron, and grated nutmeg.

  4. Finally, gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake at 300°F (150°C) for two 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
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavour.
Brown sugar
Creamed with butter for structure and moisture, adding sweetness and a caramel-like depth.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter; whites beaten and folded in add lift and airy structure.
All-purpose flour
Forms the cake's main structure once set by heat.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes lighter.
Currants
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air only when beaten and handled gently. Stirring them vigorously deflates the foam, leaving a denser cake that rises less in the oven.

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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