There are numerous recipes for sweet, round seed cakes from the 16th and early 17th centuries. A similar cake was described in Chaucer’s 14th century Canterbury Tales, where it is compared to the shape of the medieval round shield, the Buckler. I was happy to find the following recipe in the earliest published Scottish cookbook, because it’s ingredients mimic my favorite modern seed cake recipe, which contains only eggs, sugar, butter, milk, flour, ground almonds, caraway seed, orange peel and a splash of liquor.
To make a Seed-Cake.
Take 3 Doz. Eggs, keep out 6 Whites for glazing, take 3 lib of fine Sugar, beat your Sugar and Eggs, till they be thick and white, take 2 lib. an a half of Sweet Butter, and half a Mutchkin of Cream warmed, pour it into the Butter, and heat them together, till the Butter be white and light; take half an Ounce of Cinnamon, half an Ounce of Nutmeg and Cloves, an Ounce of Carvey-seed, 3 lib. of Cordecidron, 3 lib. of Orange-peil, 2 lib. of Almonds blanched and cut, then put in 4 lib. of flour among the Eggs, and put in the beaten Butter, put in half a mutchkin of brandy, mix them well together; then put in the Fruits and Spices, and the all well together, and put it in the Frame, and send it to the Oven.
[One note on the above recipe: Medieval eggs were MUCH smaller than our eggs are today, so we see an exaggerated number of eggs used in these types of recipes.]
I feel confident that the modern redaction that I used had just the right taste to mimic a period seed cake recipe. My cake was very moist and stored very well in an airtight container. The perfect sweet, Medieval bite!