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Dessert

Seed Cake

Seed Cake is a baked cake made with flour, rice flour, sugar, butter, eggs, caraway seeds, and milk.

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 ↓

Seed Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow 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. Rub the butter with the flour, sugar, rice flour, and baking powder until there are no lumps. Add the caraway seeds.

  2. Beat the eggs until frothy and mix all ingredients to a stiff consistency.

Bake

  1. Turn the mixture into a well-greased tin. Bake for about 1 hour.

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

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

  3. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rice + carawaytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together64 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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its starch sets during baking.
Rice flour
Adds a finer, more tender crumb than wheat flour alone.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness by coating flour particles and carrying flavour.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and lift when beaten until frothy.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to make the cake rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and contributes to browning in the crust.

The step that matters

Beating the eggs until frothy. Air whisked into the eggs gives the batter lift before baking, so under-beaten eggs can leave a dense cake. Mixing to a stiff consistency also matters, since overmixing after the flour is added can toughen the crumb.

Swap the caraway

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

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

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

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