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Dessert

Washington Cake

A spiced raisin cake with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, nutmeg, cinnamon, sherry, brandy, baking soda, sweet milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. 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.

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar until smooth.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  3. Stir in the sifted flour, nutmeg, cinnamon, sherry, brandy or whiskey, and baking soda dissolved in sweet milk.

  4. Fold in the floured raisins gently.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake immediately in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

  2. Serve iced or plain, as 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Sherry + brandytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Granulated sugar
Creams with the butter and adds sweetness and browning.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure of the cake as it sets during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the milk and sherry to help the cake rise and brown.
Seeded raisins
Add chewy texture and sweetness; flouring them helps keep them suspended in the batter.

The step that matters

Fold in the floured raisins gently. Overmixing at this stage develops gluten in the flour and deflates the batter, which can make the cake dense and toughen its texture.

“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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