Caraway seed cake Caraway seed cake Seed cake is a traditional British cake flavoured with caraway or other flavourful 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. James Matterer reports that recipes for seed cake are found in A.W.'s "Book of Cookrye" (1591) and "The English Huswife" by Gervase Markham (1615). The cake was popular in the 1700s, and through the Victorian era. Recipes for it are included in many early
Seeds of Diversity 141 cultivars. In 1989, the Heritage Seed Program received a 5-year grant from the W. Garfield Weston Foundation which allowed activities and publicity to expand, and grants from various organizations were subsequently applied for and received. In 1995 the Heritage Seed Program of Canadian Organic Growers became incorporated and changed its English name to Seeds of Diversity while maintaining the French name "Semences du patrimoine". Honey bees, which have traditionally been emphasized as important crop pollinators in Canada, did not exist in North America before they were introduced there by humans. In Western countries including Canada, honey bees have recently