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Dessert

Seed Cake

A sweet pastry made with egg, sugar, milk, pastry flour, baking powder, butter, and caraway seeds.

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 Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg until light.

  2. Gradually add the sugar while beating.

  3. Mix in the warm milk.

  4. Add the sifted pastry flour and baking powder, then stir well.

  5. Incorporate the melted butter and caraway seeds, stirring until smooth.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a shallow buttered pan.

  2. Bake until golden, then cool and cut into squares.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Egg
Beaten to trap air and add structure as the cake sets.
Pastry flour
Forms the main structure of the cake once mixed with liquid.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavour.

The step that matters

Stir the batter until smooth. Stirring the flour in after the liquids should be thorough but not overworked, because too much mixing develops gluten and can make the cake tough. Blending the melted butter evenly keeps the crumb consistent.

Swap the caraway

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

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

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