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Dessert

Seed Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, brandy, flour, and a mixture of raisins, cherries, almonds, and mixed peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Seed Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA very moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Cut the raisins, cherries, and mixed peel into small pieces.

  2. Blanch and chop the almonds.

  3. Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy, about 20 minutes.

Make the batter

  1. Add the egg yolks one at a time and the brandy, beating for a few more minutes.

  2. Fold in the prepared fruit.

  3. Whip the egg whites until very stiff.

  4. Sift the flour.

  5. Add the egg whites and flour alternately to the mixture.

  6. Pour the batter into a greased and lined cake tin.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 2 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.

  1. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Brandy + curranttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Brandy + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake its tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whipped whites add lift and structure.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Castor sugar
Creams with butter to aerate the batter and adds sweetness and tenderness.
Almonds
Add nutty flavour and a bit of texture within the crumb.

The step that matters

Whipping the egg whites until very stiff. Stiff whites hold air that gives the cake lift. If they are underwhipped or deflated when folded in, the cake will be dense. Folding gently with the flour keeps that trapped air intact.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, egg, brandy, raisin, currant. 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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