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Dessert

Seed Cake

A sweet cake flavored with caraway seeds, made from flour, sugar, butter, water, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,435 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream the softened butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the water and mix well.

  3. Sift the flour and baking powder together, then gradually add to the butter mixture.

  4. Stir in the caraway seeds until evenly distributed.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and smooth the top.

  2. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure as the starch that sets when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and creaming it with sugar traps air for a lighter crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, fluffy texture when creamed with butter.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the cake rise.
Caraway seeds
Add a warm, aromatic flavor throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Gradually adding the flour mixture. Adding the dry ingredients gradually and mixing only until combined keeps the batter smooth. Overmixing once flour is in develops gluten, which can make the cake dense and tough.

Swap the caraway

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Carawaythe original

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