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Dessert

Seed Cake

Seed cake is a baked cake made with flour, sugar, caraway seeds, clarified dripping, milk, egg, and baking powder.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt.

  3. Rub the clarified dripping into the flour until no lumps remain.

  4. Add the sugar and caraway seeds, mixing well with a wooden spoon.

  5. In a cup, beat the egg with the milk.

  6. Pour the egg mixture into the flour mixture and stir until a stiff paste forms.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease a cake tin with dripping.

  2. Pour the mixture into the tin and bake for 1 hour.

  3. Check if the cake is done by inserting a clean knife; it should come out clean.

  4. Turn the cake out of the tin and let it cool on its side before serving.

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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.
Egg
Binds the mixture and adds structure as it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the cake rise and open up.
Clarified dripping
Rubbed into the flour to add fat, giving tenderness and richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg mixture into the flour. Stirring only until a stiff paste forms keeps the batter tender. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which can make the cake tough and dense.

Swap the caraway

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

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

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

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