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Dessert

Seed Cakes

Seed Cakes are a sweet baked treat made with butter, sugar, sour cream, egg whites, baking soda, flour, and caraway seeds.

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

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.

Make the dough

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

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

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

  4. Stir in the baking soda and enough flour to form a stiff dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough thin like pie crust and sprinkle caraway seeds on top.

  2. Use a fluted rolling pin to roll over the dough, then cut into square cakes.

  3. Bake in the preheated oven 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. Caraway + flourtop 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
Creams with sugar to trap air and give the cakes a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cakes and, creamed with butter, helps create a light structure.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and mild acidity for a tender crumb.
Egg whites
Add structure and binding so the dough holds its shape.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity of sour cream to lift and lighten the dough.
Flour
Provides the structure that turns the mixture into a stiff dough.

The step that matters

Stir in the baking soda and enough flour to form a stiff dough.. Baking soda needs acid to react and release gas, so it should be mixed in evenly. Adding too much flour makes the dough dense and tough, so stop once it is stiff enough to roll.

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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