Skip to main content
Dessert

Seed Cake

A yeast-leavened cake made with sugar, eggs, milk, butter, spices, and caraway seeds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 200 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Seed 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 the yeast

  1. Mix the yeast with a little flour and warm water, then set it to rise.

Make the batter

  1. Once light, combine sugar and eggs in a bowl and work them together.

  2. Add milk, baking soda (dissolved in milk), nutmeg, ground spice, and caraway seeds.

  3. Stir in enough flour to make a stiff batter.

  4. Work in the melted butter and set the mixture to rise.

Bake

  1. When light, bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.

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 + carawaytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together200 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Yeast
Ferments and lightens the batter so it rises before baking.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they are worked with sugar.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness, giving the cake a rich, soft crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the milk to add lift and help the cake rise and brown.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the stiff batter together as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps browning during baking.

The step that matters

Stir in enough flour to make a stiff batter. A batter that is too thin will not hold its rise and can bake heavy, while one that is too stiff bakes dense. The flour amount must balance the liquid so the structure sets properly in the oven.

Swap the caraway

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Carawaythe original
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Clovefits about as well

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

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes