Books and cakes - 11

     There was little lavish eating at the Lyonshall vicarage in The Mysteries of Glass, even less at the curate's cottage - though he seemed well looked after by the hard-working Martha, but when Richard takes tea with Susannah, Millie serves a plate of seed cake.
"Susannah held his gaze, and there began then, in the firelit parlour, the intimacy .... of silence, which Richard began to discover as one of the most erotic gifts that life could offer."


    Coincidentally, I read that caraway seeds (which are the principal flavouring in seed cake) were added to love potions, and on a more prosaic note, a man of eighty writing in 1714 said he had eaten a roasted apple with caraway comfits (a type of sweet) every night for fifty years and had never suffered from "constipation, gout, or stone or any other distemper incident to old age".


     Regardless of its aphrodisiac or other properties, I can strongly recommend this cake, the recipe for which is to be found here. Its flavour is mild but distinctive and the addition of the crunchy almonds on top a fine balance to the very light and buttery sponge. It has earned a place in my regular repertoire.

 

Comments

[Peter the flautist]

I (sadly) cannot comment upon the aphrodisiac qualities of caraway either, though I do note that it has been shown (in rats) to have some positive effects on reducing tumor growth in colon cancer (see Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology Volume 214, 2006 pp290-296). In a small study (12 people) caraway oil was seen to have a relaxing effect on the gall-bladder (see Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics, Volume 17, 2003 pp. 445-451(7))

Anyway notwithstanding my very minimal and completely inexpert reading of some of the scientific literature I bet the cake is indeed delicious.

[Barbara MacLeod]

I seem to recall a character in a novel (Tolsty? Zola?) who I think was a teacher and always had the scent of caraway on her breath. I don't recall it being a mystery story but I think the association for the character was always a bad one.

[Peter the flautist]

J. Joyce, Dubliners - Counterparts: "The curate brought him a glass of plain porter. The man drank it at a gulp and asked for a caraway seed. He put his penny on the counter and, leaving the curate to grope for it in the gloom, retreated out of the snug as furtively as he had entered it."