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Dessert

Seed Cake

Seed Cake is a baked cake made with flour, brown sugar, cream of tartar, milk, butter, sour milk, baking soda, eggs, and seeds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

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.

Prepare the dough

  1. Sift together flour, brown sugar, and cream of tartar.

  2. Warm milk and butter together.

  3. Add sour milk and baking soda to the warm mixture until it froths.

  4. Beat in the eggs and seeds.

  5. Mix everything together with your hands.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough thin and cut it into rounds.

  2. Bake for 15 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness to the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that helps stabilize the dough and works with the baking soda to lift it.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer texture.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda, producing lift and a tender crumb.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a deeper flavour to the cake.

The step that matters

Adding sour milk and baking soda. Baking soda must react with the acidic sour milk while the mixture is warm and fresh. Letting the reaction stall or sitting too long weakens the gas that lifts the dough, so the cake may turn out dense.

“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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