A Rich Seed-Cake, Call’d the Nun’s Cake

From Mrs. E. Smith, The Compleat Housewife (London, 1727; recipe from 1742 edition): Take four pounds of your finest flour, and three pounds of double-refin’d sugar beaten and sifted, mix them together, and dry them by the fire till you prepare your other materials. Take four pounds of butter, beat it in your hands till it is very soft like cream, then beat thirty-five eggs, leave out sixteen whites, and strain out the treddles of the rest, and beat them and the butter together till all appears like butter; put in four or five spoonfuls of rose or orange-flower-water, and beat it again; then take your flour and sugar, with six ounces of carraway-seeds, and strew it in by degrees, beating it up all the time for two hours together; you may put in as much tincture of cinamon or ambergrease as you please; butter your hoop, and let it stand three hours in a moderate oven.