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Dessert

Coffee Cake

A sweet cake made with sugar, egg yolks, chocolate, almonds, spices, coffee, flour, baking powder, egg whites, raisins, currants, and citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the sugar and egg yolks until well combined.

  2. Add the grated chocolate, ground almonds, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice.

  3. Stir in the cold coffee.

  4. In another bowl, combine the flour and baking powder, then add to the mixture.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  6. Toss the raisins, currants, and sliced citron with a little flour, then stir into the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

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. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Chocolate + coffeetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Beaten and folded in, they lighten the batter and help it rise.
Egg yolks
Enrich the batter and add richness and moisture as they bind with the sugar.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the cake rise and become light.
Ground almonds
Add moisture, richness and a tender crumb to the cake.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps create a tender texture with the yolks.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Beaten egg whites hold air that makes the cake light. Stirring vigorously knocks that air out, leading to a dense cake, so fold with a broad, gentle motion until just combined.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, chocolate, cinnamon, clove, allspice, coffee):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Walnutfits about as well
  3. Hazelnutfits about as well
  4. Chestnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, chocolate, cinnamon, clove, allspice, coffee. 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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