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Dessert

Xrzsh Seed Cake

A cake made with butter, rose water, sugar, eggs, flour, rice flour, almonds, lemon extract, and caraway seeds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Xrzsh Seed Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and rose water together, adding the rose water one tablespoon at a time.

  2. Gradually mix in the sifted sugar and beaten eggs.

  3. Add the all-purpose flour, rice flour, almonds, lemon extract, and caraway seeds; mix well.

Bake

  1. Butter a cake tin and line it with buttered paper.

  2. Pour the batter into the prepared tin and bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Rose + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,465 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with the sugar and eggs to give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and lift as the cake bakes.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure of the cake once baked.
Rice flour
Adds a finer, more delicate crumb to the structure from wheat flour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps brown the crust while baking.
Almonds
Add richness and moisture to the crumb.

The step that matters

Adding the rose water slowly. Creaming the butter with rose water one tablespoon at a time lets the liquid emulsify into the fat. Adding it all at once can split the mixture and weaken the batter's texture.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, rose, sugar, egg, flour, rice, almond):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, rose, sugar, egg, flour, rice, almond. 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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