Skip to main content
Dessert

Coffee Cake

A moist cake flavored with coffee, molasses, raisins, currants, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, mix coffee (or coffee extract), molasses, butter, and sugar until well combined.

  3. Add raisins, currants, flour, nutmeg, cinnamon extract, cloves, and eggs; mix until smooth.

  4. Dissolve baking soda in a small amount of hot water and add to batter; stir well.

Bake

  1. Pour batter into greased baking pan and bake for about 45‑50 minutes 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. Raisin + flourtop 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. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 the cake sets in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses acidity to lighten the batter and help it rise.
Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and deep sweetness with a slight acidity.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps give it a tender texture and browning.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda. Baking soda needs an acid, such as the molasses here, to react and leaven the batter. Dissolving it fully in hot water before adding it spreads the reaction evenly so the cake rises without pockets or bitter spots.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

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

More coffee cake recipes

German 56Filling 7Apple 4Chocolate 3Dutch 3 See all 347 →

You might also like

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesCoffee Ice CreamCoffee Ice Cream91 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes