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Dessert

German Coffee Cake

A yeasted cake with cinnamon and sugar topping, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

German Coffee Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Set sponge overnight with warm milk, yeast, and salt.

  2. In the morning, add sugar, melted butter, beaten eggs, and cinnamon.

  3. Stir in flour until the dough is stiff like pound cake.

  4. Beat the dough until it comes off your hands.

  5. Let the dough rise.

Shape and top

  1. Roll the dough out.

  2. Place the dough in a cake pan.

  3. Cover the dough with a mixture of sugar, cinnamon, and dried rolled bread.

  4. Dot the top with bits of butter.

  5. Let the top rise for a few minutes.

Bake

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 20 minutes.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Yeast
Ferments the sponge, producing gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping bind the dough and give it a tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, and browns the top of the cake.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the stiff dough its structure.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning to the topping.

The step that matters

Beat the dough until it comes off your hands. Beating develops gluten so the dough becomes elastic and holds gas during rising. Stopping too early leaves a dense, weak crumb that may not rise well.

Swap the cinnamon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, butter, egg, flour, bread):

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, butter, egg, flour, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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