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Dessert

Seed Cake

Seed Cake is a baked dough made with flour, sugar, milk, butter, eggs, seeds, and leavening.

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

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

  2. Sift together the flour, brown sugar, and cream of tartar.

Make the dough

  1. Warm the milk and butter together in a saucepan.

  2. Add the sour milk and baking soda to the warm mixture and stir until frothy.

  3. Beat in the eggs and seeds.

  4. Combine all ingredients and mix with your hands.

Shape and bake

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

  2. Bake for 15 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. 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it sets.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture and a deeper, caramel-like flavour.
Butter
Adds fat, which tenderises the crumb and gives richness.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure as the proteins set during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to release gas that helps the dough rise.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds a slight tang.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda to the sour milk mixture. Baking soda reacts with acid as soon as it is wet, releasing gas that lifts the dough. Stirring it in promptly and getting the dough into the oven without delay keeps that gas from escaping before the structure sets.

“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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