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Drink

Boiled Coffee

A method of preparing coffee by boiling water and coffee grounds, then removing some liquid to concentrate, served with cream and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Coffee and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,202 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Boiled Coffee

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the coffee

  1. Scald the pot, then pour in 1 quart of boiling water.

  2. Stir in 3 cups of coffee and boil for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Settle and serve

  1. Five minutes before serving, pour out half a teacupful and return it to the pot.

  2. Repeat this step a second time.

  3. Set the pot near the fire to keep it just at the boiling point without boiling.

  4. Serve directly from the coffee pot with thick sweet cream and boiled milk.

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. Coffee + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Coffee + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,339 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Coffee
Provides the main flavour; the grind size affects how much fine grounds stay suspended in the brew.
Boiling water
Extracts the soluble flavour compounds from the coffee grounds during boiling.
Thick sweet cream
Adds richness and fat that softens the bitterness of the coffee.

The step that matters

Keep the coffee just below a hard boil at the end. Once the grounds are in, a rolling boil over-extracts bitter compounds and keeps fine grounds churning. Holding the pot just at the boiling point without boiling lets the grounds settle while the flavour stays smooth.

“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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