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Dessert

Plain Seed Cake

A baked cake made with flour, treacle, ginger, butter, caraway seeds, candied lemon peel, soda, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Plain Seed Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Mix the flour, treacle, ground ginger, butter, caraway seeds, and candied lemon peel together in a bowl.

  2. Warm the butter and mix it well with the other ingredients.

Mix and bake

  1. Dissolve the carbonate of soda in boiling water and stir it into the treacle.

  2. Add the treacle mixture to the other ingredients and work everything together thoroughly.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered tin and bake for 2 hours in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C).

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Treacle
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the cake.
Carbonate of soda
Reacts with the acidic treacle to produce gas, helping the cake rise.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.

The step that matters

Dissolving the carbonate of soda. Carbonate of soda must be fully dissolved in the boiling water before mixing, so it reacts evenly with the treacle. Unevenly distributed soda can leave pockets of bitter taste and uneven rising.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, lemon. 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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