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Chocolate Washington Pie
1½ cups sugar, butter size of 3 eggs, 3 eggs, 1 cup milk, 3 cups flour, 3/4 tsp. soda, 1½ tsp. Slade's cream tartar (3 layers). Filling: 1/2 cake Baker's chocolate grated, 1½ cups sugar, 2 cups milk, 3 tsp. cornstarch.
— Elsie Tunison Snow
A church-supper cake set down in the shorthand of a cook who assumed her reader already knew how to cream butter and sugar and how hot her range ran. Everything below is what the card leaves out.
- Butter "size of 3 eggs"Period tables usually put butter the size of an egg at about 2 oz, or 1/4 cup, so this is roughly 3/4 cup (6 oz, 1 1/2 sticks). The measure was always approximate; anything from 1/2 to 3/4 cup will make a workable cake, with the larger amount giving a richer crumb.
- Slade's cream tartarD. & L. Slade of Boston was a familiar grocery brand; the ingredient is plain cream of tartar. With the 3/4 tsp soda it forms a homemade single-acting baking powder; on the usual equivalence (1 tsp baking powder is about 1/4 tsp soda plus 1/2 tsp cream of tartar) the pair is roughly 3 tsp of modern baking powder, which can be substituted for both.
- Work quickly once mixedCream of tartar and soda react on contact with the wet batter and do not hold a second rise the way double-acting powder does. Get the batter into the pans and into the oven without pause.
- OvenNo temperature is given. A moderate oven, about 350F, suits it. Three thin 9-inch layers will likely need somewhere around 15 to 25 minutes; start checking early, and bake until a tester comes out clean and the edges pull from the pan.
- Baker's chocolateBaker's unsweetened chocolate was sold in cakes of varying size, commonly a quarter or a half pound, so half a cake is likely somewhere between 2 and 4 oz; 4 oz gives a rich filling. Grating was necessary because the block was hard; chopped chocolate or unsweetened chocolate wafers melts just as well.
- Making the fillingNo method is given. Whisk the cornstarch into a little of the cold milk, heat the rest with the chocolate and sugar until smooth, stir in the slurry and cook, stirring, until it boils and thickens — about a minute at the boil, or the starch will not set. Cool to room temperature before spreading or it will run off the layers.
- Assembly and yieldTwo layers of filling between three cakes; the card says nothing about finishing the top, which can be left bare or dusted with sugar. Serves 10 to 12.
"Washington pie" is a New England name for a cake baked in shallow pie tins and split or layered with a filling — traditionally raspberry jam, though by the late nineteenth century bakers were filling it with custard, cream or, as here, a cooked chocolate pudding, which puts it on the same family tree as Boston cream pie. The patriotic name is generally traced to the fashion for attaching Washington's name to plain, respectable American cookery rather than to any connection with the man himself. The recipe's habits place it in its period: butter measured against eggs, soda and cream of tartar instead of ready-made baking powder, and a named grocery brand — Slade's of Boston, Baker's of Dorchester — which is how a contributor signalled the standard she cooked to. Philathea cookbooks were compiled by the Philathea classes, young women's Bible classes that arose in the Baraca-Philathea movement of the 1890s and spread through American Protestant churches, and were sold to raise money for the class; Elsie Tunison Snow's name sits under the ingredients as the contributor of this recipe.