Skip to main content
Dessert

A Cheap Seed Cake

A yeast-leavened cake made with flour, sugar, allspice, ginger, butter, milk, and optional seeds or currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Mix the flour, sugar, allspice, and ginger in a bowl.

  2. Melt the butter with the milk until warm.

  3. Add the yeast to the warm mixture and combine with the dry ingredients to form a dough.

  4. Let the dough stand in a warm place for a few minutes.

Bake

  1. Add seeds or currants if desired.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°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.

  1. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Allspice + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,359 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough as its proteins set during baking.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and enriches the flavour.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the crust brown during baking.
Milk
Supplies moisture that hydrates the flour and forms the dough.

The step that matters

Let the dough stand in a warm place. Yeast needs warmth and time to produce gas, and the dough only rises properly if it is given that rest before baking.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, allspice, ginger, butter, milk):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. 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.

More seed cake recipes

Caraway 101Irish 3Poppy 3 See all 68 →

You might also like

Ginger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipes