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Dessert

Coffee or Mocka Cake

A fruit cake flavored with coffee and spices, baked with butter, sugar, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Coffee or Mocka 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.

Prepare

  1. Sift the baking powder with the flour into a bowl.

  2. Add the spices, sugar, and butter; rub together well.

Make the batter

  1. Make a well in the center, pour in the syrup, and add the coffee.

  2. Break in the eggs and beat well.

  3. Mix in the other ingredients with a strong wooden spoon, adding a little milk if the mixture is not moist enough.

  4. Fold in the fruit last.

Bake

  1. Bake in a long square cake pan lined with parchment paper at 350°F (175°C) for 1 to 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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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

Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as the starches set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the cake rise and turn light.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cake brown.
Golden syrup
Adds sweetness and moisture, keeping the cake soft.

The step that matters

Mix in the other ingredients. Overmixing once the flour is in develops gluten and makes the cake tough, while too little mixing leaves dry pockets. Mix just until combined and add milk only if the batter is stiff.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, syrup, flour, egg, nutmeg, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, syrup, flour, egg, nutmeg, clove. 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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