Skip to main content
Dessert

Seed Cake

A baked cake made with dough, dripping, sugar, caraway seeds, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Seed Cake

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. If using store-bought dough, place it in a bowl, cover with a cloth, and let it rise in a warm place.

  2. Melt the dripping in a separate bowl.

Mix and bake

  1. Add the melted dripping, sugar, caraway seeds, and egg to the dough.

  2. Mix everything thoroughly with a wooden spoon.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered tin.

  4. Bake the cake for just over 2 hours at 350°F (175°C).

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. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + carawaytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Caraway + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,012 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

Dough
Provides the yeasted structure and airy crumb as it rises.
Good dripping
Adds fat and richness, keeping the cake moist and tender.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crust brown.
Egg
Binds the mixture and adds structure and richness to the crumb.

Swap the caraway

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

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

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

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes