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Dessert

Coffee or Moka Cake

A moist cake made with butter, brown sugar, golden syrup, currants, sultanas, flour, baking powder, spices, eggs, and cold coffee.

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 Moka 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 the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

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

  3. Add the spices, sugar, and butter, then mix well.

  4. Make a well in the center.

  5. Pour in the syrup and add the coffee.

  6. Break in the eggs and beat well together.

  7. Mix in the other ingredients with a strong wooden spoon.

  8. If the mixture is not moist enough, add a little milk.

  9. Fold in the currants and sultanas last.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a long square cake pan lined with parchment paper.

  2. Bake 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

Flour
Forms the cake's structure as the starch and gluten set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the cake rise and turn light.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich, soft crumb.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cake brown.
Strong cold coffee
Adds liquid and a deep coffee flavor to the batter.

The step that matters

Fold in the currants and sultanas last. Adding dried fruit at the end, with gentle folding, keeps the batter from being overworked. Overmixing develops gluten and can make the cake tough, and it can also let the fruit sink or break up.

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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