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Dessert

Caraway Cakes

A sweet cake flavored with caraway seeds, rosewater, and butter, baked until golden and dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and caraway 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 ↓

Caraway 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.

Prepare

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

  2. In a large bowl, mix the flour and softened butter until well combined.

  3. Add the yeast, rosewater, egg yolks, sugar, and caraway seeds. Mix until a paste forms.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the mixture into cakes and place them on a baking sheet.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown.

  3. Once done, sprinkle with powdered sugar before serving.

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. Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 structure that holds the dough together and sets as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps the cakes brown as they bake.
Yeast
Produces gas that helps the dough rise and gives it a light texture.
Egg yolks
Add richness and emulsify the fat, binding the dough and adding color.
Sugar
Sweetens the cakes and promotes browning in the oven.
Caraway seeds
Contribute the characteristic aroma and a slightly warm, earthy flavor.

The step that matters

Mix until a paste forms. Working the dough enough to combine the fat, yolks and flour evenly gives a uniform texture. Overmixing can make the cakes dense and tough, while undermixing leaves dry pockets.

Swap the caraway

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Carawaythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, egg, sugar. 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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