Skip to main content
Dessert

Washington Cake

A moist cake made with sugar, butter, egg yolks, cream, flour, vanilla, raisins, currants, and sliced citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the egg yolks and cream, mixing well.

  3. Gradually stir in the flour and vanilla extract until combined.

  4. Fold in the raisins, currants, and sliced citron.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for 1.5 hours or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

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

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

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Egg yolks
Add richness and emulsify the batter, helping it bind and set in the oven.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sugar
Creams with butter for aeration and adds sweetness and browning.
Cream
Adds moisture and fat, producing a softer, more tender crumb.

The step that matters

Baking until fully set. Underbaking leaves the centre wet and sunken because the egg and flour structure has not yet set; a toothpick test confirms it is done.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Blackberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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

More washington cake recipes

Martha 6 See all 69 →

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipesCurrant SherbetCurrant Sherbet9 recipes