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Dessert

A Cheap Seed Cake

A simple seed cake made with flour, sugar, allspice, ginger, butter, milk, water, yeast, and caraway seeds or currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,620 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

A Cheap 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. Mix flour, sugar, allspice, and ginger in a bowl.

  2. Melt butter with milk and water until warm.

  3. Stir in yeast.

Make and rise the dough

  1. Combine the wet and dry ingredients to form a dough.

  2. Let the dough rise in a warm place for a few hours.

  3. Add caraway seeds or currants as preferred.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 hours.

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. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Allspice + carawaytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together69 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Ginger + carawaytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together288 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the cake its structure.
Unsalted butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become airy.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form a soft, cohesive dough.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise in a warm place. Yeast needs warmth to produce gas, and gluten traps that gas so the dough expands. Too cool a spot slows rising and leaves a dense cake.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, ginger, butter, milk, caraway. 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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