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Dessert

German Coffee Cake

A sweet cake with a crumbly topping made from flour, butter, eggs, milk, sugar, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

German Coffee Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Sift together flour, salt, sugar, and baking powder.

  2. Rub in the butter until well combined.

  3. Add the beaten eggs and milk to the dry mixture to form a stiff batter.

  4. Spread the batter ½ inch thick on well-buttered pans.

Add the topping and bake

  1. For the topping, mix together flour, cinnamon, and sugar.

  2. Rub in the butter until crumbly and spread thickly on top of the dough.

  3. Bake for about 30 minutes 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Flour + buttertop 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 structure of the batter and the crumbly topping.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and turns light.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and makes the topping crumbly.
Milk
Moistens the dry ingredients so they form a batter.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the topping brown lightly.

The step that matters

Spread the batter ½ inch thick on well-buttered pans. A batter this stiff spreads unevenly if pressed too thin or left too thick, so the cake may bake unevenly. Well-buttered pans keep the cake from sticking when it is removed.

“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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