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Dessert

Caraway-seed Cake

A cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, nutmeg, flour, and caraway seeds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 200 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Caraway-seed Cake

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.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and egg whites separately.

  3. Mix in the egg whites first, then add the yolks and beat for 10 minutes.

  4. Add the grated nutmegs and sifted flour, mixing well.

  5. Fold in the picked caraway seeds.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared baking pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

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. Nutmeg + carawaytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together200 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Egg whites add lift and airy structure, while yolks add richness and set the crumb.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Creamed with butter, it helps trap air and adds sweetness and browning.
Sifted flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Caraway seeds
Contribute a distinct aromatic flavour throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Beating the egg yolks and whites together. The record says to beat the yolks for 10 minutes after adding them to the whites. Long beating incorporates air that the batter depends on for rise, so under-beating can leave a dense cake.

Swap the caraway

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Carawaythe original
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, nutmeg, flour. 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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