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Dessert

Coffee-cakes

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

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 the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the dough

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

  2. Add warm milk gradually until the mixture is smooth.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough thinly and cut into cakes using a wineglass.

  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
Forms the structure of the dough as the base that sets in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the dough tender and rich while helping it brown.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and fine texture, and helps the cakes brown.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness and structure.

The step that matters

Add warm milk gradually until the mixture is smooth. Adding the liquid slowly lets the butter and sugar blend evenly into the flour, so the dough comes together smooth rather than lumpy or wet.

Swap the caraway

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

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

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