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 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
Set a sponge with the milk, yeast, and enough flour to make a batter.
When the sponge is light, add the grated lemon rind, butter, sugar, egg, and more flour to form a stiff dough.
Let the dough rise until doubled in size.
Shape and top
Roll the dough out quite thin and place it in tins or pie plates, then let it rise again.
When light, spread with melted butter, then sprinkle thickly with a mixture of sugar, cinnamon, and a little flour.
Bake
Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Ferments the sponge so the dough rises and becomes light.
- Butter
- Adds richness and tenderness, and browns the topping as it bakes.
- Egg
- Adds structure and richness to the enriched dough.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the dough and helps the topping brown in the oven.
- Flour
- Provides the structure that holds the dough and topping together.
- Milk
- Hydrates the flour and moistens the dough.
The step that matters
Let the dough rise until doubled in size. Yeast needs time to produce gas and build structure. Rising too briefly leaves the cake dense, while over-proofing can cause it to collapse or turn coarse.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, sugar, flour, egg):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Figfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, sugar, flour, 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.
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