Name: A Cheap Seed Cake
Ingredients: 10 cups all-purpose flour; 1 cup sugar; ¼ ounce allspice; ¼ teaspoon ground ginger; ¾ cup butter; ½ cup milk; ½ cup yeast; seeds or currants to taste

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

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

In a large bowl, mix flour, sugar, allspice, and ginger.
Melt the butter and mix it with the milk until warm.

Make the dough

Add the yeast to the warm mixture and combine with the dry ingredients to form a dough.
Let the dough rise in a warm place for a few minutes.

Bake

Fold in seeds or currants, then transfer to a baking pan.
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.

Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,620 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Allspice + curranttop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,359 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + allspicetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,302 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

All-purpose flour: Forms the gluten network that gives the cake its structure.
Butter: Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavour.
Milk: Adds moisture and helps bring the dough together.
Yeast: Produces gas that makes the dough rise.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown.

Swap the currant

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

Raisinfits better
Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Currantthe original

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