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Dessert

Coffee' Cake

A moist cake made with sugar, molasses, cold coffee, raisins, butter, eggs, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix together the sugar, molasses, and cold coffee.

  2. Stir in the melted butter and eggs until well combined.

  3. Add the raisins, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg, and mix until incorporated.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

  2. Bake for one hour or until a toothpick inserted in the center 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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Coffee + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together895 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and turn light.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a rich, slightly bitter sweetness.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer mouthfeel in the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps brown the crust while keeping it moist.
Cold coffee
Adds liquid to hydrate the batter and deepens its flavor.

The step that matters

Bake until a toothpick comes out clean. Baking powder and eggs set the batter as it heats, but removing the cake too early leaves the center wet and sunken, while overbaking dries it out. Testing the center shows when the structure has fully set.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Allspicefits about as well

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