Skip to main content
Dessert

Seed Cake

Seed Cake is a baked dough 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
Jump to recipe ↓

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.

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

Make the dough

  1. Add the sour milk and baking soda to the warm mixture and beat until frothy.

  2. In a large bowl, combine the egg mixture and seeds with the dry ingredients.

  3. Mix everything together with your hands until well combined.

Shape and bake

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

  2. Bake for 15 minutes or until 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. 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Eggs
Add structure and richness as they set during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acid to release gas that lightens the dough.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds a slight tang.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture and a soft, caramel-like flavour.

The step that matters

Beating the sour milk and baking soda until frothy. The acid in the sour milk reacts with the baking soda to release carbon dioxide bubbles. Beating until frothy traps these bubbles in the batter, which lifts the cake as it bakes.

“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.

More seed cake recipes

Caraway 101Irish 3Poppy 3 See all 68 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes