Caraway seed cake

Caraway seed cake
Type	Cake
Place of origin	United Kingdom
Main ingredients	Flour, eggs, caraway seeds
	Cookbook: Caraway seed cake; Media: Caraway seed cake;

Seed cake is a traditional British cake flavoured with caraway or other flavourful seeds. Caraway seeds have been long used in British cookery, and at one time caraway-seed biscuits were prepared to mark the end of the sowing of the spring wheat. These particular biscuits later evolved into this distinctively flavoured tea cake.

James Matterer reports that recipes for seed cake are found in A.W.'s Book of Cookrye (1591) and The English Huswife by Gervase Markham (1615).^[1] The cake was popular in the 1700s, and through the Victorian era. Recipes for it are included in many early cookbooks, including Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy (1747)^[2] (note that there are recipes for both "cheap seed-cake" and "a rich seed-cake, called the nun's cake"), Elizabeth Moxon's English Housewifery Exemplified (1764), Amelia Simmons' American Cookery (1796), Mary Eaton's The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary (1822), and Isabella Beeton's Book of Household Management (1861).^[3]

"Seed cake" and "caraway cake" often have different recipes (see, e.g., recipes number 231 "carraway cake" and number 235 "seed cake" in Elizabeth Moxon's 1764 cookbook,^[4] and recipes for "carraway cake" and "seed cake" in Mary Eaton's 1822 cookbook). Caraway seeds were so popular a flavouring that they appear in at least 14 cake or biscuit recipes, as well as other items, including soap, a treatment for "hysterics," and as a bait for rat traps in The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary.

This cake is also known to have been popular in Ireland and Wales. See also Goosnargh Cake (Biscuit/cake named after village in Lancashire)

References

↑ Matterer, James. "Seed Cake". A Boke of Gode Cookery. Retrieved April 4, 2012.
↑ Glasse, Hannah (1774). "The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy; Which Far Exceeds any Thing of the Kind yet Publiſhed".
↑ Beeton, Isabella Mary (1861). "Chapter 35 - Bread, Biscuits, and Cakes - Recipes". Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management.
↑ Moxon, Elizabeth. "English Housewifery Exemplified". Retrieved April 4, 2012.

External links

English Housewifery Exemplified at Project Gutenberg

American Cookery, or the Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry and Vegetables, and the Best Modes of Making Pastes, Puffs, Pies, Tarts, Puddings, Custards and Preserves and All Kinds of Cakes, from the Imperial Plumb to Plain Cake. Adapted to this Country, and All Grades of Life. at Project Gutenberg

The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches at Project Gutenberg

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[1] Matterer, James. "Seed Cake". A Boke of Gode Cookery. Retrieved April 4, 2012.

[2] Glasse, Hannah (1774). "The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy; Which Far Exceeds any Thing of the Kind yet Publiſhed".

[3] Beeton, Isabella Mary (1861). "Chapter 35 - Bread, Biscuits, and Cakes - Recipes". Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management.

[4] Moxon, Elizabeth. "English Housewifery Exemplified". Retrieved April 4, 2012.