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Dessert

Coffee Cake Without Eggs

A moist coffee cake made with sugar, molasses, coffee, butter, raisins, flour, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 Without Eggs

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 the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, mix together the sugar, molasses, coffee, and butter until well combined.

  3. Stir in the raisins.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg.

Mix and bake

  1. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until just combined.

  2. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

  3. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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 cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep sweetness, and dark color, and its acidity reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Produces carbon dioxide with the acidic molasses, lifting the batter as it bakes.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Stirring the dry ingredients into the wet mixture. Stir only until just combined. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which makes the cake tough and dense rather than tender.

Swap the clove

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

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

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

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