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Dessert

Quick Coffee Cake

A quick, moist cake flavored with lemon, butter, and optional fruit, topped with nuts, sugar, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Quick 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

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

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs, sugar, and butter in a bowl until creamy.

  2. Add the milk, salt, lemon juice, and rind; mix well.

  3. Sift together the flour and baking powder, then add to the mixture.

  4. Fold in any optional fruit if desired.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

  2. Sprinkle chopped nuts, sugar, and cinnamon on top before baking.

  3. 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. 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. Flour + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the cake a tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown lightly as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form a smooth, pourable batter.

The step that matters

Sift the flour and baking powder, then fold in gently. Sifting spreads the leavening evenly so the cake rises uniformly. Folding in gently keeps the air and gas bubbles in the batter, which keeps the crumb light rather than dense.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, sugar, lemon, butter, flour, nuts):

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

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