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Dessert

Coffee Cake

A moist cake made with butter, brown sugar, molasses, coffee, flour, raisins, spices, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Coffee Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and brown sugar.

  3. Add the eggs, molasses, and strong coffee; mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, nutmeg, allspice, and cinnamon.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until combined.

  6. Fold in the raisins.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

  2. Bake slowly for about 1 hour or 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and creaming it with sugar traps air for a tender crumb.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and deepens the flavor of the cake.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a robust, slightly bitter sweetness.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set with heat.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses and coffee to produce gas that helps the cake rise.

The step that matters

Bake slowly at a low temperature. Baking at 300°F gently sets the batter so the center cooks through before the outside darkens too much. Testing with a toothpick confirms the center is set.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, sugar, molasses, coffee, flour, raisin):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Clovefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, sugar, molasses, coffee, flour, raisin. 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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