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Dessert

Coffee Cakes

A sweet cake flavored with coffee, milk, butter, sugar, eggs, spices, and flour.

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

Why it works: Allspice and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,331 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Coffee Cakes

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.

Make the coffee milk

  1. Brew 1 cup of coffee and steep it in 2 cups of boiling milk for 1 hour, covered.

  2. Strain the mixture and let it cool.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until creamy.

  2. Add the eggs and mix well.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in the cooled coffee and stir it into the butter mixture.

  4. Add allspice, grated nutmeg, and cream of tartar.

  5. Mix in enough flour to form a paste.

  6. Roll the dough thinly on a floured surface.

  7. Sprinkle the dough with sugar.

  8. Cut the dough into shapes.

Bake

  1. Bake on greased baking sheets 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Coffee + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar and coffee to produce gas that lightens the dough.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness through fat that coats the flour and sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps it brown during baking.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that works with the baking soda to help the dough rise.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in the cooled coffee. Baking soda needs an acid to react and release gas. If the coffee is still hot, the reaction may happen too quickly before baking, so letting the liquid cool first helps keep the leavening controlled.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (coffee, milk, butter, sugar, egg, nutmeg, cream):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against coffee, milk, butter, sugar, egg, nutmeg, cream. 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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