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Dessert

Coffee Cake

A sweet cake flavored with coffee, cinnamon, and cloves, topped with a nutmeg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the sugar, cinnamon, coffee, cloves, butter, flour, egg, and baking soda to form a thick batter.

  3. Divide the batter between two pie tins and bake until golden.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, combine boiling water with flour to thicken.

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter, then stir in the thickened water rapidly.

  3. Season the sauce with plenty of nutmeg.

Serve

  1. Serve the cake with the sauce, or reheat by steaming for dinner.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Cinnamon + coffeetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together895 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the batter together as it bakes.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps give the cake its set structure.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic ingredients to make the cake rise and lighten.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in both the cake and the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning as the cake bakes.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, coffee, butter, flour, egg, sauce. 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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