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Dessert

A Cheap Seed Cake

A cheap seed cake made with flour, sugar, allspice, ginger, butter, milk, yeast, and seeds or currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

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

  2. Melt the butter with the milk until warm, then add the yeast.

  3. Combine the wet and dry ingredients to form a good dough.

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

  5. Add seeds or currants to the dough.

Bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C) and bake 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 main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crumb brown during baking.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the crumb tender and rich.
Milk
Provides moisture that hydrates the flour and forms the dough.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, which makes the dough rise.

The step that matters

Letting the dough stand in a warm place. Yeast works fastest in warmth, so a warm spot helps the dough rise. If the place is cold, the yeast works slowly and the cake may be dense.

Swap the currant

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.

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