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Dessert

Washington Pie

A layered apple cake with a sweet jelly made from apples, lemon, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. 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 cake

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

  2. Cream together 1 ½ cups sugar and ½ cup butter.

  3. Add ½ cup sweet milk and 3 eggs, mixing well.

  4. Stir in 2 ½ cups flour and 2 teaspoons baking powder.

  5. Divide the batter into three layers.

  6. Bake the layers in jelly cake tins.

Make the apple jelly

  1. Peel and grate 2 large apples.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the grated apples, 1 cup sugar, grated lemon rind, and lemon juice.

  3. Steam the mixture until it forms a jelly.

  4. Remove the mixture from heat.

  5. Stir in the yolk of 1 egg.

Assemble

  1. Once the cake and jelly are cool, layer them together.

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

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

  2. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to add tenderness and a rich flavour to the cake.
Eggs
Add structure and richness to the batter as it sets in the oven.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake layers as the batter bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the layers rise and become light.
Apples
Grated into the filling, providing moisture and body to the jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the batter brown and soften as it bakes.

The step that matters

Steam the apple mixture until it forms a jelly. The filling thickens as its moisture evaporates and the apple pectin sets it. Heating too briefly leaves it runny, while overcooking can make it stiff, so the jelly must be checked as it thickens.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

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