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Dessert

Coffee Cake

A sweet cake made with flour, butter, syrup, coffee, spices, raisins, and currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Coffee Cake

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 dough

  1. Sift the flour with the baking powder.

  2. Cut in the butter and mix it through the flour.

  3. Stir in the syrup and mix with cold coffee until you achieve a soft dough consistency.

  4. Work in the ground cloves, cinnamon, allspice, raisins, and currants.

Bake

  1. Bake in oblong pans in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for one hour.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and turns light.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness by coating flour particles in fat.
Syrup
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cake brown as it bakes.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of fruit sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Work in the dried fruit evenly. Flouring the raisins and currants keeps them from sinking to the bottom of the batter. Mixing them evenly spreads the fruit and spices through the dough so each slice tastes the same.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, syrup, coffee, clove, cinnamon, allspice):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, syrup, coffee, clove, cinnamon, allspice. 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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