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Dessert

Coffee Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, brown sugar, molasses, coffee, raisins, nuts, flour, eggs, spices, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Coffee Cake

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, cream the butter and dark brown sugar together until smooth.

  3. Add the molasses and cold coffee, mixing well.

  4. Stir in the raisins and hickory nuts.

  5. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and spices.

  6. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing until just combined.

  7. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and then fold them into the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan and bake for about 30-40 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Coffee + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together105 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Raisin + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to add richness and a tender crumb.
Dark brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and deepens the color of the cake.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color and a robust, slightly bitter sweetness.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help give the cake structure and lift.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to help the cake rise.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing until just combined. Once flour meets liquid, gluten begins to form. Overmixing makes the cake tough and dense, so stop as soon as no dry streaks remain.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Nutsthe original
  4. Walnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, molasses, coffee, raisin, flour, egg. 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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