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Baking

Coffee Cake

A sweet cake made with flour, butter, treacle, brown sugar, currants, sultanas, lemon peel, ginger, baking soda, and coffee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Coffee Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Mix the butter with the flour.

Make the batter

  1. Add the currants, egg, brown sugar, lemon peel, ginger, and treacle.

  2. Mix the baking soda into the boiling coffee, then stir the coffee into the mixture quickly and thoroughly.

  3. Pour the batter into buttered tins, filling them only halfway.

Bake

  1. Bake for about 2 hours.

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. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic treacle and reacts with heat to lift and lighten the cake.
Butter
Adds fat that coats flour and gives a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Treacle
Adds moisture, dark colour and a deep, slightly bitter sweetness.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps give it structure as it sets.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture and a caramel-like flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring in the baking soda coffee. Baking soda needs to be mixed in quickly and thoroughly so its gas is evenly distributed before the batter sets. Uneven mixing leaves pockets of bitter soda and a poorly risen cake.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, butter, sugar, lemon, coffee, ginger. 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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