Name: Coffee Cake
Ingredients: 1 pound winter wheat flour; 5 ounces butter; 4 large eggs; 4 tablespoons milk; 1 tablespoon sugar; ½ teaspoon salt; 1 biscuit of leaven (made from compressed yeast)

Why it works: Wheat and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Coffee Cake

Ingredients

Directions

In a bowl, make a well in the center of the flour.
Add butter, eggs, milk, sugar, salt, and the leaven to the well.
To make the leaven, dissolve a cake of compressed yeast in 2 tablespoons of warm water, then mix in 2-3 tablespoons of flour to form a soft biscuit.
Drop the leaven biscuit into a deep bowl of warm water and let it rise for 5 minutes.
While the leaven rises, mix the other ingredients in the bowl with your hand.
Once the leaven has risen, add it to the mixture and fold the dough carefully.
Transfer the dough to a greased pan and let it rise in a warm place for 3 hours.
After 3 hours, turn the dough out onto a board and shape it as desired.

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.

Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,418 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Wheat + biscuittop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together116 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Flour + biscuittop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together889 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,373 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).