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Dessert

Washington Cake

A fruit cake with raisins, currants, spices, and wine baked at 350°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Washington Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

  2. Butter and line your pan with parchment paper.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the cream and one-fourth of the flour, mixing well.

  3. Whisk the eggs until thick, then gradually stir them into the mixture.

  4. Add the remaining flour, spices, and wine alternately, mixing well.

  5. Stir in the fruit until evenly distributed.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into the pan, smoothing the top.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven until a toothpick comes out clean.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + creamtop 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. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Whisked eggs add structure and lift, helping the cake set and hold its crumb.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich texture.
Flour
Its proteins set during baking, giving the cake its structure.
Sugar
Beaten with butter to aid aeration and adds sweetness and browning.
Raisins
Chewy dried fruit adds sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.
Currants
Dried fruit that adds sweetness, moisture and chewy texture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Whisking the eggs and folding them in gradually. Whisked eggs trap air that helps the cake rise. Adding them gradually, rather than all at once, keeps the batter emulsified and prevents it from curdling or deflating, so the crumb stays even.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, flour, egg, cream, wine, raisin):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, egg, cream, wine, raisin. 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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