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Bread

Coffee Cake

A moist cake made with flour, butter, sugar, molasses, coffee, raisins, currants, citron, eggs, spices, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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

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. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Warm the molasses slightly and beat it into the butter and sugar mixture along with the spices for five minutes until light.

  3. Add the egg yolks and coffee, mixing well.

  4. Gradually add the flour, alternating with the whipped egg whites.

  5. Stir in the dissolved baking soda and the dredged fruit.

  6. Beat thoroughly and pour into two loaf pans or round tins.

Bake and store

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until done.

  2. Wrap in a thick cloth once cooled to prevent sweating and store in a cake box.

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. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  3. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Provides the structure that holds the crumb as the cake sets in the oven.
Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and adds fat for a tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown while creaming aerates the batter.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep sweetness and color, and its acidity reacts with the baking soda.
Eggs
Bind the batter and, when whipped, add lightness and help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to release gas, helping the cake rise.

The step that matters

Gradually adding the flour, alternating with the whipped egg whites. Adding flour in portions and folding gently keeps the batter light. Overmixing develops gluten, which makes the cake dense and tough, while the whites trapped air needs to stay in the batter to lift the crumb.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, sugar, molasses, coffee, raisin, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, molasses, coffee, raisin, egg. 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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