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Dessert

Washington Pie

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, cream, eggs, flour, baking soda, nutmeg, and topped with marmalade.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Washington Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Add the sugar and mix well.

  3. Stir in the cream or sour milk and baking soda.

  4. Beat the eggs and add them to the mixture.

  5. Add nutmeg or flavoring to taste, then mix in the flour.

Bake and assemble

  1. Pour the batter into round jelly pans, spreading it thin.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 15 to 20 minutes.

  3. Once baked, place on a plate and spread a layer of marmalade or jelly on each cake.

  4. Cover with another cake and frost if desired.

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

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

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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 the sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, creamy batter when beaten with butter.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, setting the crumb as the cakes bake.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake's shape as it bakes.
Cream or sour milk
Adds moisture and works with baking soda to lighten the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk or cream to produce gas that helps the cakes rise.

The step that matters

Spreading the batter thin in the pans. Thin layers bake quickly and evenly, so the cakes set through without drying out or rising unevenly. Thick batter can leave the centers underbaked or the edges overdone.

“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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