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Dessert

Coffee Icing

A cake made with eggs, sugar, flour, baking powder, butter, and topped with a coffee‑based icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Coffee Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cake

  1. In a basin, beat the eggs and sugar over hot water until warm, about 10 minutes.

  2. Remove the basin and continue beating for 5 minutes.

  3. Sift in the flour and baking powder, then stir gently.

  4. Pour the mixture into a buttered and sugared mold and bake until done.

  5. Let the cake cool completely before removing it from the tin.

Make and decorate the icing

  1. For the icing, beat the butter and sugar until white and creamy.

  2. Gradually add the cold coffee, a few drops at a time, until it forms a firm, smooth paste.

  3. Transfer the icing to a piping bag and decorate the cake in a Turkish pattern.

  4. Store the decorated cake in a cool place until ready to serve.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Flour and butter 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
Whipped with sugar, they trap air that gives the sponge its light structure.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake crumb once baked.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.
Butter
Beaten with sugar to form the creamy base of the icing, adding richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, when beaten with eggs, helps stabilise the foam.
Clear strong coffee
Flavours the icing and, added gradually, helps it set into a firm paste.

The step that matters

Beating the eggs and sugar over hot water. Warming the eggs and sugar before beating helps them whip to a stable, voluminous foam. Under-whipping leaves a dense cake, so the foam must hold its air before the flour is folded in gently.

“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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