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Coffee Bread

Coffee Bread is a yeasted loaf with raisins, cinnamon, and a sweet topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Coffee Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Scald the milk.

  2. Add butter, sugar, and salt.

  3. Cool to lukewarm.

  4. Add dissolved yeast and flour to make a thick batter.

  5. Let rise overnight.

  6. Add the beaten egg and raisins.

  7. Adjust flour to achieve a stiff batter.

Top and bake

  1. Spread in a buttered baking pan.

  2. Cover and let rise.

  3. When light, brush with beaten egg.

  4. Melt 1 tablespoon butter. Mix in sugar and cinnamon. Add 1 tablespoon flour.

  5. Spread the topping over the dough.

  6. Bake in a moderate oven at 375°F (190°C) for 45 to 60 minutes.

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 + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the batter and dough structure that holds the bread together as it rises.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the crumb and helps the topping brown.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, and the brushed egg browns the top.
Milk
Provides moisture and softness, and its sugars help the crust brown.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.

The step that matters

Adjust flour to achieve a stiff batter. Flour absorbs liquid and sets the dough's structure; too little leaves it slack and too much makes it dense and dry, so check the consistency before the dough rises.

“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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