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Dessert

Stollen, the Famous German Cake

Stollen is a German fruit bread made with flour, butter, sugar, almonds, raisins, currants, citron, eggs, milk, rose water, spices, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

Stollen, the Famous German 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 sponge

  1. In a large bowl, combine the flour and yeast to create a sponge.

  2. Add the warm milk and let it rise until bubbly.

Mix and rise the dough

  1. Incorporate the butter, powdered sugar, beaten eggs, almonds, citron, raisins, currants, rose water, and spices into the risen sponge.

  2. Mix until well combined and let the dough rise again.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into a loaf and place it on a baking sheet.

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

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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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 dough together and traps the gas from the yeast.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the sponge and dough rise and become airy.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, softening the crumb.
Eggs
Add structure, richness and moisture to the dough.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.

The step that matters

Let the sponge rise until bubbly. The yeast needs time in warm milk to become active and build gas. If the sponge is not properly risen, the dough will stay dense and fail to rise in the later stages.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, sugar, almond, egg, raisin, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, almond, egg, raisin, milk. 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.

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