Skip to main content
Dessert

Coffee Cake

A sweet cake made with brown sugar, butter, eggs, coffee, spices, raisins, currants, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream together the brown sugar and butter or lard.

  2. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the strong coffee.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix the baking soda, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, raisins, currants, and baking powder with the flour.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture until well combined and stiff.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan and bake for 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cake brown and stay tender.
Butter or lard
Creates fat structure when creamed with sugar, giving the cake a tender crumb.
Eggs
Provide structure and binding that hold the batter together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic coffee and sugar to help the cake rise and brown.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking to give the cake lift.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set in the oven.

The step that matters

Gradually adding the dry ingredients. Mixing dry ingredients into the wet mixture in stages keeps the batter evenly combined. Overmixing once the flour is in develops gluten, which can make the cake tough and dense.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, egg, coffee, nutmeg, clove, cinnamon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, coffee, nutmeg, clove, 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.

More coffee cake recipes

German 56Filling 7Apple 4Chocolate 3Dutch 3 See all 347 →

You might also like

Coffee Ice CreamCoffee Ice Cream91 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipes