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Dessert

Breakfast Coffee-cake

A sweet bread cake made with dough, sugar, butter, and cinnamon topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Breakfast Coffee-cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Shape and top

  1. Add ½ cup sugar and 1 tablespoon melted butter to the bread dough.

  2. Roll out the dough to 1 inch thick and place it on a greased pie pan.

  3. Brush the top with melted butter and cover thickly with cinnamon and sugar.

Bake and serve

  1. Let it rise, then bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C).

  2. Cut into long, narrow strips.

  3. Serve hot or cold.

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

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

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + cinnamontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  4. Bread + cinnamontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,705 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Bread dough
Forms the base that rises and bakes into a soft, bready cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and caramelizes on top for browning.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, keeping the crumb tender and helping the topping brown.

The step that matters

Let it rise before baking. Bread dough gets its light texture from gas trapped during rising. If it is baked before it has risen fully, the cake will likely turn out dense.

“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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