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Dessert

Washington Pie, Chocolate Filling

A chocolate filling for a Washington pie made from egg yolks, sugar, milk, chocolate, vanilla, and confectioners' sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Washington Pie, Chocolate Filling

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cake

  1. Bake a plain cupcake in two layers.

Make the chocolate filling

  1. Heat the egg yolks in a saucepan until light.

  2. Stir in the sugar, then the milk.

  3. Melt the chocolate and mix it into the milk mixture.

  4. Cook on the stove until it thickens, then beat until cool.

  5. Flavor with vanilla and spread between the cake layers.

Finish

  1. Sprinkle confectioners' sugar on top.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  4. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

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

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the filling as they cook and add richness.
Chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and helps set the filling as it cools.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the bitterness of the chocolate.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the filling that thickens when cooked.

The step that matters

Cook on the stove until it thickens. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently, but overheating can scramble them into lumps. Cook slowly and stir steadily, then beat while cooling to get a smooth filling.

“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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