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Dessert

Coffee Cake

A sweet yeast cake with raisins, butter, and cinnamon, baked in pans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

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.

Prepare the dough

  1. Take a piece of raised dough large enough to fill two good-sized dripping pans, about 1 inch thick.

  2. Work in 1 cup of powdered sugar, 2 eggs, and 1 egg-sized piece of butter or lard until well combined.

  3. Flavor with essence of lemon and let it rise as you would bread.

  4. Once raised, roll out to desired thickness and place in pans.

Bake and serve

  1. Let it rise again, then brush the top with butter and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon.

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

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

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Raised dough
Forms the yeasted base that rises and gives the cake its bread-like crumb.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind the dough so it holds its shape.
Butter or lard
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich mouthfeel.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the crumb while dissolving easily into the dough.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise again before baking. The second rise lets the yeast build gas and air in the dough. Baking before it has risen enough leaves a dense, heavy cake.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, lemon, butter, cinnamon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits about as well
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, lemon, butter, 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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