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Dessert

Coffee Cake

A sweet bread cake made with bread sponge, eggs, sugar, butter, water, flour, and optional cinnamon or almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Coffee Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the bread sponge, beaten eggs, sugar, butter, and tepid water.

  2. Mix well and add flour to create a stiff batter.

  3. Let the batter rise until it doubles in size.

Shape and bake

  1. Spread the batter in a baking tin and let it rise again.

  2. Brush the top with beaten egg mixed with 1 teaspoon of sugar.

  3. Sift granulated sugar over the top and add a dash of cinnamon or split almonds if desired.

  4. Bake 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. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 sponge
Ferments and leavens the batter so it rises before baking.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and the beaten egg glaze gives the top color.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for a softer crumb and richer flavor.
Flour
Forms the stiff batter that gives the cake its structure.

The step that matters

Letting the batter rise until it doubles. The bread sponge needs time to ferment and trap gas; under-proofed batter bakes dense, while over-proofed batter can collapse and turn coarse.

Swap the cinnamon

The recipe marks cinnamon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, egg, sugar, butter, flour, almond):

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

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