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Dessert

Caraway Cakes

A yeast-based cake flavored with caraway seeds, rose water, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Caraway Cakes

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.

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine flour and unsalted butter.

  2. Add yeast, rose water, egg yolks, caraway seeds, and powdered sugar.

  3. Knead the mixture into a paste.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the paste as desired.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Rose + carawaytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together93 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together.
Unsalted butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Yeast
Acts as a leavening agent that can help the dough rise.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the dough.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and fine texture, and helps the crumb stay tender.
Rose water
Adds a floral aroma.

The step that matters

Knead the mixture into a paste. Kneading only until the mixture forms a paste keeps the dough tender. Extra kneading develops gluten, which makes the baked texture tough and dense.

Swap the caraway

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Carawaythe original
  4. Capersfits less well

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