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Dessert

Cream for Washington Pie

A sweet custard-like cream made with milk, sugar, egg, flour or cornstarch, vanilla, and optional coconut, used as a filling for Washington pie.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,294 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Cream for Washington Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Add the sugar, egg, and cornstarch to the boiling milk.

  3. Stir until the mixture thickens.

  4. Remove from heat and flavor with vanilla.

  5. Let the cream cool until it is not stiff.

Assemble and serve

  1. Cut the cake in half and spread the cream on one half.

  2. Place the other half of the cake on top to create two layers.

  3. Sprinkle grated coconut over the cream if desired.

  4. Serve the pie cold.

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. Vanilla + coconuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,294 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

  5. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Thickens the cream as it cooks and adds richness and structure.
Flour or cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, sliceable cream as it heats.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream and provides moisture and richness.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cream and helps soften its texture.

The step that matters

Stir until the mixture thickens. Starch thickens only when it reaches a boil while being stirred, and egg can scramble if overheated. Stirring constantly keeps the cream smooth and evenly set.

Swap the coconut

The recipe marks coconut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, milk, egg, vanilla):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, milk, egg, vanilla. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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