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Dessert

Coffee Cake

A yeasted bread-like cake with butter, sugar, cinnamon topping, baked after rising.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Coffee Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Dissolve the yeast cake in the water.

  2. Combine the butter, sugar, salt, and milk, then stir until melted.

  3. Add the dissolved yeast and 1½ cups of flour and beat until smooth and bubbly.

  4. Incorporate the beaten egg and enough additional flour to form a dough (about 1½ to 2 cups).

  5. Knead the dough as you would for bread.

  6. Let it rise until doubled in size (about 3 hours).

Shape and bake

  1. Knead slightly.

  2. Roll out to about 1 inch thick and place the rolled dough in a pan.

  3. Let it rise for 1 hour.

  4. Brush the top with melted butter.

  5. Sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon.

  6. Bake for about 20 minutes.

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. Butter + milktop 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. Butter + flourtop 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

Yeast cake
Ferments the dough so it rises and becomes light and airy.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten structure that gives the dough its body and chew.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the dough for a tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour, and browns the top when brushed on.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning to the topping.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until doubled. Yeast needs enough time to produce gas and expand the gluten network; rising too short leaves a dense cake, while the dough must be allowed to rise fully before shaping and baking.

“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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