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Dessert

German Coffee Cake

A yeasted bread cake flavored with brown sugar, cinnamon, and currants, topped with sugar and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,655 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. 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. Combine bread dough, brown sugar, milk, eggs, shortening, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Let the mixture rise until doubled in size.

  3. Add currants or raisins and cinnamon, stirring until stiff.

Shape and bake

  1. Transfer the dough to pans and sprinkle sugar and cinnamon on top.

  2. Let it rise again.

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

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Currant + cinnamontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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 dough
Provides the yeasted structure that rises and gives the cake its bread-like crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the dough hold its shape and bake tender.
Shortening
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crust brown during baking.
Currants or raisins
Add pockets of sweetness and chew throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until doubled. Yeast needs time to produce gas and build the airy structure. Rising too briefly leaves a dense cake, and the second rise after shaping helps it bake up light.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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