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Dessert

Coffee Bread

A yeasted bread with raisins, topped with butter, sugar, cinnamon, and flour, baked until golden.

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; add butter, sugar, and salt; cool to lukewarm.

  2. Add dissolved yeast and enough flour to make a thick batter.

  3. Let rise overnight.

  4. In the morning, add the beaten egg and raisins. Adjust flour to achieve a stiff batter.

Shape and top

  1. Spread the batter in a buttered baking pan; cover and let rise.

  2. When light, brush the top with beaten egg.

  3. For the topping, melt 1 ½ tablespoons butter, then mix in sugar, cinnamon, and flour.

  4. Spread the topping over the batter.

Bake

  1. 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 structure of the batter, and adding more firms it into a stiff dough.
Yeast
Produces gas during the long rise, leavening the bread so it becomes light and airy.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, and the brushed egg helps the top brown evenly.
Butter
Adds fat for tender texture and flavor, and melted butter makes the topping cohesive.
Milk
Provides moisture and softness to the dough, and its proteins help browning.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and sweetens the bread, and it helps the topping caramelize as it bakes.

The step that matters

Let the batter rise until light before topping and baking. The yeast needs time to produce gas and build a light, airy crumb. Baking before the batter has risen enough gives a dense result that may not rise well in the oven.

“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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