Skip to main content
Bread

German Coffee Bread

A yeasted bread made with milk, butter, sugar, raisins, and cinnamon, baked in a moderate oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

German Coffee Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Heat the milk until scalding, but do not boil.

  2. Stir in cottolene (or butter), sugar, and salt while the milk is hot.

  3. Let the mixture cool to blood-warmth.

  4. Dissolve the yeast cake in the warm milk and add it to the mixture.

  5. Add flour to create a stiff batter and cover it to rise until light.

Shape and rise

  1. Fold in the raisins and spread the batter in a buttered dripping pan, about ½ inch thick.

  2. Cover and let it rise again.

Bake

  1. Brush the top with melted butter and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for 30 minutes, covering with thick paper for half the baking time.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Yeast cake
Ferments the batter so it rises and becomes light and airy.
Flour
Forms the stiff batter structure that holds the raisins and rise.
Milk
Provides moisture and dissolves the sugar, helping the dough soften and brown.
Cottolene or butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Raisins
Add sweetness and moist pockets of fruit throughout the bread.

The step that matters

Cool the milk to blood-warmth before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the mixture must cool to lukewarm before the yeast is dissolved in it. Too hot and the yeast fails to raise the batter.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, sugar, flour, cinnamon):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Blueberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, sugar, flour, cinnamon. 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.

You might also like

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipesPotato BreadPotato Bread124 recipes