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Dessert

Seed Cake

A baked cake made with eggs, butter, blanched almonds, citrus peels, coffee sugar, flour, oil of cinnamon, and lemon extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. 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 your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately.

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until well combined.

  3. Fold in the beaten eggs and mix thoroughly.

  4. Add the blanched almonds, citron peel, orange peel, lemon peel, flour, oil of cinnamon, and lemon extract.

  5. Mix until just combined and pour into a prepared cake tin.

Bake

  1. Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide structure and lift when beaten and folded into the batter.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness by coating flour and creaming with sugar.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure as its proteins set during baking.
Coffee sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.
Blanched almonds
Add body, moisture and a nutty flavour to the crumb.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten eggs. Beaten eggs hold air that gives the cake its rise. Folding gently, rather than stirring hard, keeps that air from collapsing and keeps the crumb light.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, almond, lemon, coffee, sugar, 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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