Skip to main content
Dessert

Seed Cake

Seed Cake is a baked cake made with eggs, butter, almonds, citrus peel, coffee sugar, flour, cinnamon oil, and lemon extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Seed Cake

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

  2. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until well combined.

  2. Gradually add the egg yolks to the butter mixture.

  3. Fold in the flour, almonds, citron peel, orange peel, lemon peel, oil of cinnamon, and lemon extract.

  4. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake tin and smooth the top.

  2. Bake for about 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted in the center 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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whites trapped by beating add lift, and yolks add richness and structure to the crumb.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds fat for a tender texture.
Flour
Its proteins set during baking to give the cake its structure.
Blanched almonds
Their fat and protein add moisture and a nutty body to the crumb.
Coffee sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay moist.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whites hold air that gives the cake its lift. Stirring them vigorously deflates the foam and produces a dense cake, so fold gently until just combined.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, almond, lemon, coffee, sugar, flour):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, almond, lemon, coffee, sugar, flour. 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.

More seed cake recipes

Caraway 101Irish 3Poppy 3 See all 68 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipes