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Drink

Common Drinks

A coffee brewed with isinglass or fish skin to clarify the liquid.

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 ↓

Common Drinks

Ingredients

Directions

Make the coffee

  1. Boil water in a coffee pot.

  2. Add ground coffee and boil for 20 to 25 minutes.

  3. Add a piece of isinglass or fish skin when boiling the coffee.

  4. Let it stand for 4 to 5 minutes to settle.

  5. Carefully pour the coffee into an urn or another coffee pot, leaving grounds behind.

Serve

  1. If cream is unavailable, use less water and dilute with boiling milk when serving.

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. Fish + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,432 recipes

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

  3. Coffee + fishtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together76 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ground coffee
Provides the coffee flavour and aroma that the whole drink is built on.
Isinglass or fish skin
Its collagen helps fine particles clump so the grounds settle and the coffee clears.

The step that matters

Let it stand to settle. Standing lets the grounds and fine particles sink after boiling. Pouring too soon or too roughly stirs them back up, leaving the coffee cloudy and gritty.

“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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