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Coffee Cakes

A yeasted sweet roll with butter layers, baked at 350°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Coffee Cakes

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Cool the milk until lukewarm, then add the yeast cakes and dissolve them.

  2. Add the remaining ingredients and beat thoroughly by hand for 10 minutes.

  3. Let the mixture rise for 6 hours.

  4. Refrigerate overnight.

Shape the cakes

  1. In the morning, turn the dough onto a floured board and roll it into a rectangle ¼ inch thick.

  2. Spread softened butter over the dough, then fold the sides toward the center to create three layers.

  3. Cut the dough into pieces ¾ inch wide.

  4. Cover the pieces and let them rise.

  5. Take each piece and twist the ends in opposite directions, then coil and bring the ends together at the top.

Bake and finish

  1. Let the cakes rise in pans and bake for 20 minutes in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cool the cakes and brush them with confectioners' sugar mixed with boiling water and flavored with vanilla.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Yeast cakes
Ferment the dough so it rises and becomes light and airy.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the dough set and become tender when baked.
Egg yolks
Add fat and richness, giving the dough a tender crumb and golden color.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, and creates flaky layers when folded into the dough.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together and sets during baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and feeds the yeast, and helps the crust brown.

The step that matters

Overnight refrigeration and the second rise. Cold retarding slows yeast activity and develops flavor, while the shaped pieces need enough time to rise before baking so the cakes stay light rather than dense.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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