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Dessert

Coffee Cake

A yeasted sweet bread with a cinnamon‑sugar topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. 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.

Make the dough

  1. Dissolve the yeast cake in the water.

  2. In a mixing bowl, combine the butter, sugar, salt, and milk; stir until melted.

  3. Add the dissolved yeast and 1½ cups of flour; beat until smooth and bubbly.

  4. Incorporate the beaten egg and enough additional flour to form a bread dough.

  5. Knead the dough as you would for bread, then let it rise until doubled in size (about 3 hours).

Shape and bake

  1. After rising, knead slightly and roll out to about 1 inch thick.

  2. Place the rolled dough in a pan and let it rise for 1 hour.

  3. Brush the top with melted butter, sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon, and bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 20 minutes.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  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

Yeast cake
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes it rise and become airy.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the dough for a tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, and browns the topping when brushed on.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning to the topping.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise fully. Yeast needs time to produce enough gas to leaven the dough. Rising until doubled, and again in the pan, gives a light texture; under-proofed dough bakes up dense.

“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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