Skip to main content
Dessert

Coffee Cake

A sweet loaf made from raised dough, butter, lard, sugar, eggs, cinnamon, raisins, and soft sponge, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Coffee Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Knead the raised dough with salt, sugar, egg, butter, and lard like bread.

  2. Let the dough rise until light, then knead again.

  3. Sift flour and baking powder together.

  4. Rub in butter and lard.

  5. Add beaten eggs, sugar, cinnamon, stewed raisins, and soft sponge.

  6. Mix until the mixture reaches the consistency of bread.

  7. Let the dough rise in a warm, greased jar for about 2 hours.

Shape and bake

  1. Mould the dough into loaves and let rise again until light.

  2. Spread butter, sugar, and cinnamon on top before baking.

  3. Bake the loaves in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Forms the bulk of the structure that holds the dough and crumb together.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind and set the crumb during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour in the dough and topping.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during baking.
Soft sponge
Acts as a leaven that helps the dough rise and become light.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking to lift the dough further.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until light. The dough must rise fully before shaping and baking, because the yeast-based rise creates the airy crumb; under-proofing leaves a dense loaf, 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.

More coffee cake recipes

German 56Filling 7Apple 4Chocolate 3Dutch 3 See all 347 →

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes