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To Make a Seed Cake with Oil

A cake made with dough, sugar, lemon rind, seeds, oil, and eggs, baked until done.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 270 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

To Make a Seed Cake with Oil

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Boil the oil with a small piece of bread or dough.

  2. Let it cool before adding to the mixture.

  3. Beat the eggs well before adding them.

  4. Oil the baking tin.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until done.

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. Lemon + carawaytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together270 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + carawaytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Sifted sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the cake a tender crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and bind the batter as they set in the oven.
Best oil
Adds moisture and tenderness to the crumb.
Seeds (caraway or aniseed)
Add a distinctive aroma and flavour to the cake.
Lemon rind
Adds bright citrus aroma.

The step that matters

Let the boiled oil cool before adding it. Hot oil can partly cook the eggs or thin the batter unevenly, so letting it cool keeps the mixture smooth and evenly textured.

Swap the caraway

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, 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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