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Dessert

Coffee Cakes

A sweet cake made with coffee, milk, butter, sugar, eggs, baking soda, allspice, nutmeg, cream of tartar, 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 batter

  1. Steep the coffee in boiling milk for one hour, then strain and let it cool.

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

  3. Add the eggs and mix well.

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

  5. Add the allspice, grated nutmeg, and cream of tartar, then mix in enough flour to form a paste.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough thinly with sugar and cut it with a cake cutter.

  2. Bake on tin 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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to give the cakes a tender, rich texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar and coffee to lift the cakes as they bake.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so the baking soda can react and help the cakes rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the cakes and, when creamed, helps trap air for a lighter texture.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in the cooled coffee. Baking soda needs an acid to react and make gas for rising. Dissolving it fully in the liquid before mixing spreads it evenly, so the cakes rise without patches of soda or a bitter taste. Coffee must be cool so it does not react too early.

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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