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Dessert

Seed Cakes

Seed cakes made with butter, sugar, sour cream, baking soda, caraway seeds, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Caraway and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,435 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Seed Cakes

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.

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Mix in the sour cream, baking soda, and caraway seeds.

  3. Gradually add flour until the dough is thin enough to roll out.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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. Caraway + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to add richness and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cakes and helps create a light, fluffy texture when creamed.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and acidity for a tender texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to help the cakes rise and brown.
Caraway seeds
Provides the aromatic, slightly peppery flavor that defines the cakes.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dough once added to the creamed mixture.

The step that matters

Adding the flour gradually. Too much flour or overworking the dough makes it tough and stiff, so flour should be added slowly until the dough is just thin enough to roll.

Swap the caraway

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Carawaythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, cream, 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.

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