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Dessert

Seed Cakes

Seed cakes made with butter, sugar, sour cream, egg whites, baking soda, flour, and caraway seeds, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and caraway 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 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.

Make the dough

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

  2. In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Add the sour cream and egg whites, mixing well.

  4. Stir in the baking soda.

  5. Gradually add flour until the mixture is stiff.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough thinly like pie crust.

  2. Sprinkle caraway seeds over the dough.

  3. Use a fluted rolling pin to roll again, then cut into square cakes.

  4. Place on a greased baking sheet and bake until lightly 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. Flour + carawaytop 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
Creaming with sugar traps air and adds richness and tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cakes and helps create a tender crumb when creamed with butter.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and acidity that keeps the cakes tender.
Egg whites
Add structure and moisture to bind the dough.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream to help the cakes rise and brown.
Flour
Provides the structure that makes the dough stiff enough to roll and cut.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the mixture is stiff. Adding flour slowly lets you stop at the right stiffness. Too much flour at once or too much overall makes the dough dry and tough, while too little leaves it too soft to roll and cut cleanly.

Swap the caraway

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Carawaythe original

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