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Dessert

Coffee Cake

A yeast‑leavened sweet bread topped with almonds, brushed with egg and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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.

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix flour, butter, eggs, warm milk, sugar, and dissolved yeast until well combined.

  2. Cover the mixture and let it rise overnight.

Shape and rise

  1. In the morning, divide the dough into two rolls and place each in a 3‑quart pan with a tumbler in the center to keep the shape.

  2. Let the rolls rise a second time.

Bake and finish

  1. Before baking, brush the tops with the beaten egg and sprinkle with chopped almonds.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

  3. Once baked, brush with melted butter and sprinkle with sugar.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the risen dough and baked crumb together.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavour in the crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help bind the dough.
Warm milk
Provides moisture and helps dissolve the yeast for dough hydration.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning to the crust.
Compressed yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.

The step that matters

Second rise of the shaped rolls. The dough must rise enough to become light and airy before baking; under-proofed rolls stay dense, while over-proofed dough can collapse in the oven as the gas structure weakens.

“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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