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Dessert

Seed Cakes

A sweet, soft cake made with sugar, butter, milk, caraway seeds, baking soda, nutmeg, and flour, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Caraway and nutmeg 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 Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Soak the caraway seeds in the milk for about 30 minutes.

  2. Mix the sugar and butter together.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk and add to the mixture.

  4. Gradually add flour until a soft dough forms.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough to about ¼ inch thick.

  2. Cut into shapes with a biscuit cutter.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 10 minutes.

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. Caraway + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together200 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Caraway + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to give the cakes richness and a tender crumb.
Baking soda
Dissolved in milk to react and lift the dough so the cakes rise and lighten.
Sugar
Sweetens the cakes and helps them brown as they bake.
Flour
Forms the soft dough structure that holds the cut shapes together.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in the milk. Baking soda needs to be fully dissolved so it spreads evenly through the dough; uneven pockets can cause patchy rising and bitter spots.

Swap the caraway

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

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

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