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Dessert

Cinnamon Cake

A yeast-based cinnamon cake made with flour, milk, sugar, butter, eggs, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Cinnamon Cake

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 ↓

Cinnamon Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Dissolve the sugar in the warm milk and set aside.

  2. Cut the yeast into the lukewarm water and mix with the flour in a large bowl.

  3. Make a hole in the flour, then stir in the milk, sugar, and yeast to form a batter.

  4. Cover and let it rise in a warm place overnight.

Enrich and proof

  1. In the morning, thicken the batter and let it rise again.

  2. Stir in the soft butter.

  3. Add one egg and beat it in, then add the second egg and beat it in as well.

  4. Pour the batter into a baking pan and let it rise for another 30 minutes.

Bake and finish

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Bake for 10 minutes, then spread soft butter on top and sprinkle with powdered sugar and cinnamon.

  3. Bake for an additional 5 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 gluten network that gives the cake its structure.
Yeast (in the method)
Produces gas during rising, leavening the batter so it becomes light.
Eggs
Add structure and richness to the batter as it sets in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavour.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Rising the batter. Yeast needs a warm place and enough time to produce gas. Under-proofed batter bakes dense, while over-proofed batter can collapse, so the rises matter for the final texture.

“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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