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Dessert

Zucker Kuchen

A sweet bread cake made from bread dough, milk, butter, sugar, cinnamon, eggs, and flour, topped with butter, raisins, almonds, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Zucker Kuchen

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. In a saucepan, mix the butter into the milk over low heat.

  2. Make a hole in the bread dough and add the sugar, eggs, and cinnamon.

  3. Pour in the warm milk and butter mixture, then mix well.

  4. Add enough flour to form a light dough and let it rise again.

Shape and top

  1. Roll out the dough to 1½ inches thick and place it in a greased baking pan.

  2. Beat 1 egg and spread it over the top of the dough.

  3. Top with pieces of butter, chopped raisins, chopped almonds, and sifted sugar.

Bake

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 15 to 16 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread dough
Provides the risen, airy base that gives the cake its structure.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind the dough and set the topping.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness, and browns the top during baking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown as it bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the dough.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise again. The second rise lets yeast gas expand the dough so the cake turns out light rather than dense. Under-proofing leaves it heavy, while over-proofing can collapse it.

“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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