Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Coffee 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.
Prepare the dough
Take a piece of raised dough large enough to fill two good-sized dripping pans, about 1 inch thick.
Work in the powdered sugar, eggs, and butter or lard until well combined.
Flavor with lemon extract and let it rise as you would bread.
Once raised, roll out to desired thickness and place in pans.
Bake
Let it rise again, then brush the top with butter and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon.
Bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden.
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.
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together7,950 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
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Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together30,779 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Butter + cinnamontop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together17,784 recipes
Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).
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
- Raised dough
- Provides the yeasted bread base that gives the cake its light, airy crumb.
- Powdered sugar
- Dissolves easily into the dough, adding sweetness and a tender texture.
- Eggs
- Add richness and structure, helping bind the dough and set the crumb.
- Butter or lard
- Adds fat for tenderness, moisture, and flavor, and browns the top.
- Sugar
- Sprinkled on top to add sweetness and help the surface caramelize and brown.
The step that matters
Let it rise again before baking. The second rise lets the yeast inflate the dough in the pans. Baking too early yields a dense cake, while letting it over-proof can collapse the structure.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sugar, egg, butter, cinnamon):
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits better
- Raisinfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, egg, butter, cinnamon. 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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