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Dessert

German Coffee Cake

A yeast‑leavened cake with butter, sugar, milk, eggs, flour, and vanilla or lemon flavor, topped with butter, sugar, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,287 recipes. Both carry 4-methoxybenzaldehyde, which smells sweet, anise. 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 batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix together the butter, sugar, warm milk, dissolved yeast, eggs, and flour until thoroughly combined.

  2. Cover the bowl and let the mixture stand in a warm place overnight.

  3. In the morning, pour the batter into pans to rise, ensuring the consistency is similar to that of layer cake batter.

  4. Flavor the batter with Royce's vanilla or lemon.

Bake

  1. Before baking, spread the top with butter and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven 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. Vanilla + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 gluten network that gives the cake its structure.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the crumb set as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, and browns the top when spread on.
Yeast
Ferments the batter overnight, producing gas that leavens the cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the top brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Overnight rise in a warm place. Yeast needs time and warmth to ferment the batter; too cold slows the rise, while the batter must be left covered so it does not dry out and form a skin.

“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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