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Dessert

Coffee Cake

A sweet cake made from bread dough, milk, raisins, lard or butter, egg, sugar, and flour, topped with butter, sugar, cinnamon, and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix the bread dough, milk, raisins, lard or butter, egg, sugar, and enough flour to create a soft sponge.

  2. Set the mixture aside to rise.

  3. Once risen, knead with just enough flour and place in pans.

  4. Set the pans in a warm place until light.

Finish and serve

  1. Brush the tops with melted butter and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon or crushed almonds.

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

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

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

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

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

Bread dough
Provides the yeasted structure that rises and gives the cake its airy, bready crumb.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the dough and contributes to a tender crumb.
Lard or butter
Adds fat, which tenderizes the crumb and gives a rich mouthfeel.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the dough, supporting its structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and feeds the yeast during rising, aiding browning.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise until light. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce gas that expands the dough. Underproofed dough stays dense, while overproofed dough can collapse and lose structure.

“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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