Name: Coffee Cake Sweet
Ingredients: 1 spongecake; ½ cup butter; ½ cup sugar; 1 pint milk; 1 pint cream; 1 teaspoon essence of coffee

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 ↓

Coffee Cake Sweet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cake

Cut the spongecake into three layers.
Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.
Spread the butter and sugar mixture on each slice and stack them back together.
Soak the stacked cake in a little milk.

Make the coffee cream

Whip the cream until fluffy.
Divide the whipped cream in half; mix essence of coffee into one half.
Spread the coffee-flavored cream on top of the cake, followed by the plain whipped cream until fully covered.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Milk + coffeetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,202 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Cream + coffeetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,339 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Spongecake: Forms the structure of the cake, absorbing the soaking milk while staying light.
Butter: Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the filling layers.
Sugar: Sweetens the filling and helps it beat up creamy with the butter.
Cream: Provides moisture and a light, fluffy topping when whipped.

“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.