Seed cake is a traditional British cake flavoured with caraway seeds. Caraway seeds have been long used in British cookery, and at one time caraway-seed biscuits were prepared to mark the end of the sowing of the spring wheat. These particular biscuits later evolved into this distinctively flavoured tea cake.
The cake was popular in the Victorian era, with a recipe for it being described by Mrs. Beeton.[1]
This cake is also known to have been popular in Ireland.