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Dessert

Seed Cake, Family, Made From Dough

A sweet cake made from leftover bread dough, butter, sugar, caraway seeds, and an egg, baked at 200°C.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Seed Cake, Family, Made From Dough

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Set the dough in a basin, covered with a cloth, before the oven to rise.

  2. Cream the butter or dripping, then work it into the dough.

  3. Add the sugar, caraway seeds, and beaten egg.

  4. Knead the dough well.

Shape and rise

  1. Place it into one large or two moderate-sized buttered baking tins.

  2. Let it stand before the oven to rise.

Bake

  1. Bake in a well-heated oven at 400°F (200°C) for about two hours.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Dough
Provides a yeasted structure that rises and gives the cake its airy, chewy crumb.
Butter or dripping
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Moist sugar
Sweetens the cake and adds moisture and a soft, caramel-like depth.
Caraway seeds
Provides the distinctive aromatic flavour that defines the cake.
Egg
Binds the dough and enriches its texture and colour.

The step that matters

Rising before baking. The dough must be allowed to rise fully before baking, because yeast gas trapped in the dough creates the light texture. Under-proofed dough bakes dense.

Swap the caraway

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, sugar, egg. 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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