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Dessert

To Make a Rich Seed-Cake

A cake made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, caraway seeds, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Make a Rich Seed-Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. Beat the butter into a cream.

  2. Add the sugar and mix well.

  3. Beat the egg whites for 30 minutes, then mix with the sugar and butter.

  4. Beat the yolks for 30 minutes, then combine with the egg whites.

Bake and rest

  1. Gradually mix in the flour, spices, and seeds just before baking.

  2. Pour into a hoop and bake for 2 hours in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  3. Let it stand for 2 hours after baking.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Caraway + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together200 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Caraway + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together188 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped whites and yolks add lift and an airy, light crumb to the cake.
Butter
Creamed with the sugar, it traps air and gives the cake its richness and tender texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown while creaming aerates the batter.
Caraway seeds
Contribute the aromatic flavour that defines a seed cake.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites and yolks separately. Whites beaten to a foam hold air that leavens the batter, so they must be well whipped. Folding in the flour gently just before baking keeps that trapped air from collapsing.

Swap the caraway

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, sugar, egg, nutmeg, cinnamon):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Carawaythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, egg, nutmeg, cinnamon. 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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