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Dessert

Coffee-cakes

A sweet baked cake made with flour, butter, powdered sugar, egg, caraway seeds, milk, and rose water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,435 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Coffee-cakes

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 your oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, butter, powdered sugar, egg, and caraway seeds.

  2. Add enough warm milk and the rose water to form a dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough out thinly and cut it into cakes using the top of a glass.

  2. Place the cakes on baking tins and bake until golden.

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 + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Caraway + rosetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together93 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together as they bake.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender, crumbly texture and rich flavour.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps it brown as it bakes.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness and structure.
Warm milk
Adds moisture so the mixture comes together into a workable dough.

The step that matters

Adding the warm milk. Too much liquid makes the dough sticky and hard to roll, while too little leaves it dry and crumbly. Add it gradually until the dough just holds together.

Swap the caraway

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, sugar, egg, milk, rose):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Carawaythe original
  4. Allspicefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, egg, milk, rose. 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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