Sometimes writing the headnotes to these recipes is fairly straightforward: I say why I like the food, describe why someone else might also like the food, add in an interesting detail or two, and presto! A post. And then there’s posts like these. Let me explain. I’ll say a word and you tell me how you react: “seedcake.”

As far as I can tell, there are three usual reactions: complete unfamiliarity, excited memories of foreign yet comforting books, and ‘what about it?’ Complete unfamiliarity is a fairly common American reaction. The exception is Americans who grew up reading fantasy, especially of the British sort. Hobbits in Middle Earth, Mr. Tumnus and the Pevensie children in Narnia, all manner of other vaguely Victorian and post-Victorian mythical creatures and their human guests: absolutely mad for seedcake. For American kids like me, always with our nose in a book, the idea of seedcake was fascinating. It sounded preposterous — a cake! made of seeds! — and yet at the same time it was obviously something to be desired, based on the excitement of its eaters. But since it was entirely absent from the world around me, I just assumed it was utterly fictional, as much as butterbeer or Qartheen shrimp and persimmon soup (or at least that soup used to be totally fictional, and it’s hard to throw a virtual brick without hitting a butterbeer recipe on the internet, but those are fan interpretations).

In any case… nope.

Because then there’s the third reaction, which mostly comes from Brits and those who are better acquainted with British culture than I am. It turns out that seedcakes are endemic to British young-adult fantasy novels of the early twentieth century because, well, they’re endemic to early twentieth-century Britain. Shocking, I know! And they haven’t gone away. The Aesthete, over at her series of not one but five (!) seed cakes from the mid-19th century through the 1990s, begins by quoting Joan Hickson as the ever-so-British Miss Marple questioning a waiter in the BBC adaptation of Agatha Christie’s At Bertram’s Hotel: “But is it a real seed cake?” And while, yes, the cake is presented as old-timey in the Beeb’s adaptation, nevertheless: it’s a 1987 production, and of course everyone watching it knows what a seed cake is.

Everyone in the BBC’s broadcasting area, that is. I nearly didn’t post this recipe, despite its utter deliciousness, because really: isn’t the world already glutted with seedcake recipes? But it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen one single recipe that used American volumetric measurements. So there it is, folks, my claim to fame: I wrote this in cups. Perhaps that small shift is all this cake needs to become as well known in the land of apple pie and Funfetti cake mix as in its homeland.

All right, I’m skeptical about that, too. But this cake certainly deserves it, with its bright, zingy anise flavor from the caraway (that’s somehow totally different than the flavor in a deli rye), a generous helping of rich butter, and just the right amount of sugar to balance out your morning coffee… or your morning cuppa.