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Dessert

Seed Cake, Common

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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, Common

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. If using store-bought dough, place it in a basin covered with a cloth in a warm place to rise.

Mix and bake

  1. Spread the dough on a floured surface, then add and mix all the ingredients until well combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a greased baking tin.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 300°F (150°C) for just over 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. 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. Beef + carawaytop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together102 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Beef + eggtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Dough
Forms the base structure of the cake and gives it a risen, bread-like crumb.
Beef dripping
Adds fat that keeps the crumb tender and moist as it bakes.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crust brown during baking.
Caraway seeds
Provide the characteristic aromatic, slightly anise-like flavour.
Egg
Binds the mixture together and adds structure as it sets in the oven.

The step that matters

Baking at a low temperature for a long time. A low oven heats the cake slowly, so the centre cooks through without over-browning the outside. Stopping too early leaves the middle wet and dense, because the egg and dough need sustained heat to set.

Swap the caraway

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Carawaythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, 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.

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