Name: Coffee Cake
Ingredients: 2 cups sugar; 1 teaspoon ground cloves; 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon; 1 cup cold coffee; 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg; ½ cup butter; 1 teaspoon cream of tartar; 3 cups flour; ½ teaspoon baking soda

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg 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.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.
Add the cold coffee, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, cream of tartar, and baking soda; mix well.
Gradually add the flour, stirring until combined.
Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

Bake

Bake for 30-35 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.

Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter: Creams with sugar to trap air and add richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Sugar: Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps give a tender texture.
Flour: Provides the structure that sets the batter into a cake as it bakes.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar and coffee to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar: Acid that reacts with the baking soda to help the cake rise and balances flavor.
Cold coffee: Adds liquid to hydrate the flour and a deep, slightly bitter flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the flour. Stirring only until combined keeps gluten development limited, so the cake stays tender instead of tough and dense.

Swap the clove

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

Cardamomfits better
Clovethe original
Allspicefits about as well
Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, coffee, nutmeg, butter, cream, flour. 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.