Skip to main content
Dessert

Cinnamon Cake

A yeast‑leavened cake made with flour, butter, milk, eggs, sugar, cinnamon, and salt, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Cinnamon Cake

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 ↓

Cinnamon Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Work together the flour, butter, milk, eggs, and salt to form a stiff paste.

  2. Roll out the paste to a thickness of half an inch.

  3. Mark the rolled dough into squares or diamonds without cutting through.

Add the filling and rise

  1. Mix the sifted sugar and powdered cinnamon.

  2. Sprinkle the mixture over the cake.

  3. Place the cake on a floured tin near a warm area to rise.

Bake

  1. Once risen, bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until done.

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. 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. Flour + buttertop 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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the dough as it sets in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the baked cake.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form a paste and adds moisture.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise before baking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Let the cake rise before baking. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce gas. If the cake is baked before it has risen, it will be dense rather than light, because the gas that lifts the dough has not yet formed.

“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.

More cinnamon cake recipes

Almond 3Chocolate 3 See all 49 →

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes