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French Coffee Cakes

A sweet pastry made from braided dough, topped with almonds and vanilla icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,961 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

French Coffee Cakes

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.

Shape

  1. Roll out the dough and cut it into long narrow strips.

  2. Braid three strips together and form into a ring, joining the ends securely.

Rise and top

  1. Place on baking pans and let rise until doubled in size.

  2. Brush with egg wash and sprinkle with chopped almonds.

Bake and ice

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

  2. Ice with vanilla icing after baking.

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. Almond + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Egg + almondtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Egg and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 27,347 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

Dough
Gives the braided ring its structure and, once risen, a soft, airy crumb.
Egg wash
Promotes browning and gives the baked surface a glossy finish.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until doubled. Rising lets the yeast-leavened dough trap gas and build structure before baking. Under-risen dough stays dense, while over-risen dough can collapse or lose its shape in the oven.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, vanilla):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Pecansfits about as well
  4. Hazelnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, vanilla. 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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