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Dessert

Cinnamon Coffee Cake

A sweet loaf made from bread dough, butter, eggs, sugar, and cinnamon, brushed with melted butter and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Cinnamon 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 the dough

  1. Cut off a piece of bread dough weighing about 5 pounds.

  2. Work in ½ pound of softened butter and 3 eggs until smooth.

  3. Let the dough rise slightly, then cut off pieces weighing about ½ pound each.

  4. Mould each piece into a ball and roll out to about ¾ inch thick.

Top and bake

  1. Brush the tops with melted butter and sprinkle with a mixture of granulated sugar and cinnamon.

  2. Let rise again and bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + cinnamontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  5. Bread + cinnamontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,705 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

Bread dough
Forms the structure and airy crumb that holds the cakes together.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the dough.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind the dough into a smooth, cohesive mass.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the topping and helps it caramelise and brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise again before baking. A second rise lets the yeast expand the dough so the pieces bake light and open rather than dense. Under-proofed pieces stay heavy and tight in the oven.

Swap the cinnamon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, egg, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, egg, sugar. 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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