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Dessert

Washington Pie

A custard pie with a flour, sugar, and egg crust and a milk-based filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 sponge

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

  2. Beat 3 eggs in a bowl.

  3. Add 2 cups flour, 1 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon cream of tartar, ½ teaspoon baking soda dissolved in 2 tablespoons milk, and 2 tablespoons butter. Mix well.

  4. Pour mixture into a pie dish and bake until golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, combine 1 egg, ½ cup sugar, ⅓ cup flour, and ½ pint milk in a saucepan.

  2. Stir ingredients together and place dish in a kettle of boiling water.

  3. Cook while stirring continuously until mixture thickens to custard consistency.

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

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Provide structure and lift to the sponge, and thicken the custard filling.
Flour
Forms the structure of the sponge and thickens the custard filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and the custard, and softens the sponge's texture.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter, helping the baking soda react and giving a lighter crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas that makes the sponge rise.
Butter
Adds fat for richness, tenderness and flavour in the sponge.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard filling. The custard thickens as egg proteins and starch set, but it can curdle or scorch if overheated or not stirred constantly. Gentle, continuous stirring over the water bath keeps it smooth.

“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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