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Dessert

Washington Pie

A cake with a whipped cream filling, made from sugar, flour, cold water, baking powder, egg whites, and flavored cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. 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.

Prepare and bake

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

  2. In a bowl, mix sugar, flour, cold water, and baking powder until smooth.

  3. Pour the batter into a loaf pan and bake until golden brown.

Assemble

  1. Once cooled, cut the top off the cake thinly and remove some of the center.

  2. Fill the hollow with whipped cream, sweetened and flavored to your liking.

  3. Fold the beaten egg whites into the cream before filling.

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

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

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the cake its structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it reacts with heat, lifting the batter so the cake rises.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps its surface turn golden brown as it bakes.
Egg whites
Beaten whites trap air, adding lightness to the cream filling.
Whipped cream
Adds moisture and richness to the filling, sweetened to taste.

The step that matters

Folding the beaten egg whites into the cream. Beaten egg whites hold air in a foam. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air in the cream so the filling stays light instead of deflating.

“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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