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Dessert

Coffee Cake

A moist cake made with butter, sugar, molasses, cold coffee, eggs, flour, baking soda, mace, cloves, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the molasses and cold coffee, mixing well.

  4. Beat in the eggs one at a time, ensuring each is fully incorporated.

  5. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, mace, cloves, and cinnamon.

  6. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until just combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan and smooth the top.

  2. Bake for 30-40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

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. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Molasses + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and creams with butter to help create a light, fluffy batter.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep flavor, and a darker color to the cake.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses and coffee to produce gas that makes the cake rise.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until just combined.. Once flour meets liquid, gluten begins to form. Overmixing toughens the batter and can make the cake dense, so stir only until no dry flour remains.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

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