Name: Oerman Coffee Cake
Ingredients: 1 quart flour; 2 teaspoons baking powder; ¼ teaspoon salt; 2 tablespoons sugar; 1 piece of butter the size of a walnut; 1 teaspoon cinnamon; Egg or sweet milk for moistening

Why it works: Walnut and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,147 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Oerman 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.

Prepare the dough

Mix flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, butter, and cinnamon until well combined.
Add enough flour to form a soft dough.
Roll the dough into two sheets.

Shape and bake

Place the sheets in two medium-sized pie tins, letting the mixture come up the sides slightly.
Moisten the top with egg or sweet milk.
Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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.

Walnut + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,147 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,341 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,873 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: Forms the dough structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder: Releases gas in the heat, helping the cake rise and turn light.
Butter: Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the top brown as it bakes.
Egg or sweet milk: Moistens the top, promoting browning and a golden surface.

Swap the walnut

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

Almondfits better
Chestnutfits about as well
Pistachiofits about as well
Walnutthe original

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