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Dessert

German Coffee Cake

A yeast-leavened cake with sugar, cinnamon, and butter, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix flour with lukewarm milk to form a soft dough.

  2. Add 4 to 5 teaspoons of Brewers' yeast and let it rise.

  3. Incorporate ½ cup sugar, 3 eggs, and a piece of butter the size of an egg.

  4. Add a little more flour, 3 to 4 teaspoons of yeast, and a little salt.

  5. Let the dough rise again in the baking tin.

Top and bake

  1. Spread melted butter or cream over the top, then sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon.

  2. Bake until golden.

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. Milk + buttertop 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 dough's structure once it is mixed with liquid and gluten develops.
Brewers' yeast
Ferments the dough so it rises and becomes light and airy.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the crumb set during baking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and feeds the yeast, and helps the top brown.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour in the dough and topping.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise again in the baking tin. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce gas that expands the dough. Rising too short leaves a dense cake, while over-proofing can cause it to collapse in the oven.

“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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