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Baking

Seed Cake

A yeast-raised cake flavoured with caraway seeds, sugar, butter, milk and warm spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,331 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Seed Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix the sugar and flour.

  2. Make a hole in the center and pour in the lukewarm milk and yeast.

  3. Draw some flour into the mixture and cover with a cloth; let it sit in a warm place for 1-2 hours.

Shape and bake

  1. Add the liquefied butter, caraway seeds, allspice, ginger, nutmeg, and enough milk to achieve a proper stiffness.

  2. Mix thoroughly, butter a mold, and pour in the mixture.

  3. Let it rise for 30 minutes at the mouth of the oven, then bake.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the cake crumb as the dough sets in the oven.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise before and during baking.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, softening the crumb and carrying flavor.
Pounded loaf sugar
Sweetens the cake and contributes to browning of the crust.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and yeast to form a workable dough.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise in a warm place. Yeast needs warmth to become active and produce gas. If the dough is too cold, it will rise slowly or not enough, leaving a dense cake.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, milk, butter, allspice, nutmeg. 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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