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Dessert

German Coffee Cake

A yeast-based coffee cake with bread sponge, sugar, butter, eggs, milk, and spices, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine the bread sponge, sugar, butter, eggs, milk, salt, and baking soda.

  2. Add enough flour to form a dough and let it rise until doubled in size.

  3. Knead the dough, then roll it out to 1 inch thick.

  4. Place the dough in bread pans and let it rise again.

Top and bake

  1. Brush the top with the beaten egg, then sprinkle with sugar and dust with cinnamon.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 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

Bread sponge
Ferments the dough so it rises and becomes light and airy.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help bind the dough.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during baking.
Milk
Provides moisture and softens the dough.
Baking soda
Reacts with the dough's acidity to add lift and help browning.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise until doubled. The dough must rise fully before baking; under-proofed dough bakes dense, while the yeast-raised structure needs time to develop gas and gluten for a light crumb.

Swap the cinnamon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, butter, egg, milk, flour. 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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