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Dessert

Coffee Cake, German

A large yeast-leavened cake made with milk, butter, lard, eggs, spices, raisins, citron, almonds, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Coffee Cake, German

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Make a sponge with 5 quarts of milk, 10 ounces of yeast, and 20 pounds of flour.

  2. Let the sponge rise for 1 hour at 90°F (32°C).

Make and shape the dough

  1. Add butter, lard, eggs, spices, fruit, and lemon extract.

  2. Stiffen the dough with 10 pounds of flour.

  3. Place 6½ pounds of dough in a pan measuring 21¼ inches by 12 inches by 2 inches.

  4. Let rise for ½ hour at 90°F (32°C).

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in an oven at 450°F (230°C).

  2. Once the cakes are cool, cover each with ¼ pound of melted sugar and sprinkle with ½ pound of chopped almonds.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

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

  5. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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 dough its structure and lets it hold rising gas.
Yeast
Ferments sugars in the sponge, producing gas that makes the dough rise.
Eggs
Add richness, structure and colour to the dough as they set during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour in the crumb.
Lard
Adds fat that shortens gluten strands, giving a tender crumb.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and dissolves sugar, forming the base of the sponge.

The step that matters

Letting the sponge rise fully. The yeast needs time at warm temperature to ferment and build gas. Under-proofed sponge leaves the dough dense, so the rise must complete before the dough is stiffened with more flour.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, flour, butter, egg, cinnamon, clove, allspice):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, butter, egg, cinnamon, clove, allspice. 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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