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Dessert

Seed Cake

Seed Cake is a baked cake made with flour, baking powder, margarine, sugar, egg, caraway seeds, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Seed Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. Cream the margarine and sugar together.

  2. Add the egg and caraway seeds to the mixture.

  3. Sift in the flour and baking powder.

  4. Stir in the milk until well combined.

  5. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

Bake

  1. Bake for about 1 hour or until a toothpick comes out clean.

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Millennium flour
Provides the main structure of the cake as it sets in the oven.
Borwick's baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Margarine
Adds fat for a tender crumb and helps trap air when creamed with sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender, browned crust when creamed with fat.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness as it sets.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid that hydrates the flour and dissolves the sugar.

The step that matters

Creaming the margarine and sugar. Beating fat and sugar together traps air bubbles that help the cake rise and give it an even, tender texture. Under-creaming leaves a dense cake.

Swap the caraway

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

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

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

More seed cake recipes

Caraway 101Irish 3Poppy 3 See all 68 →

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