Here is Mrs. Beeton's Very Good Seed-Cake:
Aside from looking like it has been attacked by shipworms it's not a bad cake. Very fine but velvety texture, not at all tough, faintly boozy, delicately flavored. Though the dark brown crust penetrates deeply and the bottom is actually black, it is just shy of being thoroughly baked with a few tiny pockets of dough. Mrs. Beeton didn't specify a temperature, of course, but the 350 I picked as the standard moderate oven is too high for that pan.
As it was covered while still warm and stood for a couple days, the moisture level is nicely equalized and the once-hard crust is now about as tender and moist as the rest of the cake though it has that deeply browned flavor I associate with some granny's unloved bundt in the church basement. The black bottom was now soft enough to just peel away.
The cake smelled strongly of caraway when baking and I was afraid it would be a musty old thing but it's quite mild. It is definitely not going to appeal to modern funfetti pudding-in-the-mix cake lovers, though. It will be fun to compare to Shreddie's separated eggs, baking powder version to see how modern techniques have changed it.
The refrigerated dough was a bonk. I think since it had a lot of butter it got too hard in the fridge to rise much and it was a good 4 hours before it was stretchy enough that I could shape buns out of it. Once it got to room temperature it behaved normally, though I couldn't tell any difference in taste compared to last night's batch.
