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Baking

Seed Cakes

Seed cakes are baked pastries made with flour, butter, seeds, milk, egg, sugar, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Seed 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C) and grease eighteen patty tins.

  2. In a bowl, combine flour and butter, rubbing the butter into the flour until it resembles a sandy texture. Mix in the seeds.

Make the batter

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg, then add the milk and sugar, mixing thoroughly.

  2. Pour the egg mixture into the flour mixture, add the baking powder, and mix well with a spoon.

Bake

  1. Spoon a large teaspoon of the mixture into each patty tin and bake for 15 to 20 minutes.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 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

Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness as it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cakes rise and become light.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to tenderise the crumb and add richness.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and sugar to form a batter, adding moisture to the cakes.

The step that matters

Rubbing the butter into the flour. Rubbing cold butter into flour coats the flour particles with fat, limiting gluten development so the cakes stay tender rather than tough. Stop when the mixture looks like fine sand.

“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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