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Dessert

English Seed Cake

A yeasted cake made with flour, butter, caraway seed, allspice, and sugar, baked at 350°F for 1½ hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

English Seed Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Mix the dough

  1. Stir the yeast into the warm milk.

  2. Rub the butter lightly into the flour.

  3. Add the caraway seed, allspice, and sugar.

  4. Mix well and knead into a light dough.

Rise and prepare the tins

  1. Line two cake tins with buttered paper.

  2. Pour the cake batter into the tins.

  3. Let it stand in a warm place for over an hour.

Bake

  1. Bake in a well-heated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1½ 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. Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Caraway + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together69 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.
Milk
Supplies moisture that hydrates the flour and dissolves the sugar.
Caraway seed
Contributes its distinctive aromatic, slightly anise-like flavour.
Allspice
Adds warm aromatic spice notes to the cake.

The step that matters

Let the dough stand in a warm place. Yeast needs time in warmth to produce gas, which makes the dough rise and gives the cake its light texture. Rising too briefly or in a cold spot leaves a dense result.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Allspicethe original

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