Skip to main content
Dessert

German Coffee Cake

A yeasted bread cake with raisins, butter, sugar, cinnamon, baked at 350°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

German Coffee 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. In a bowl, combine the bread dough, butter, sugar, and raisins.

  2. Place the mixture in a pan and let it rise until very light, about 2 hours or more.

Top and bake

  1. Spread melted butter on top of the dough.

  2. Sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 1 hour.

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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Butter + cinnamontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Bread dough
Forms the soft, airy base that rises and bakes into the cake's crumb.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and browns on the surface as the cake bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the top caramelize and brown in the oven.
Raisins
Add pockets of concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise until very light. Yeast dough rises by trapping gas in its gluten network. If it is underproofed, the cake bakes up dense; the rise must be complete before baking.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, sugar, cinnamon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Applefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, sugar, cinnamon. 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.

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes