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Drink

Cafe-au-lait

A simple coffee and milk beverage sweetened with egg whites and sugar.

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 ↓

Cafe-au-lait

Ingredients

Directions

Make the coffee

  1. Pour the coffee and boiling milk into a clean coffee urn in equal quantities, stirring gently.

  2. Cover the urn and let it stand for about five minutes to keep hot.

Prepare and serve

  1. Whip the egg whites to a froth and mix in the sugar.

  2. Sweeten each cup of coffee as you pour it out.

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 + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Coffee
Provides the strong, bitter base flavour that the milk softens.
Fresh milk
Adds richness and body, mellowing the coffee into a smooth drink.
Egg whites
Whipped to a froth, they add a light, airy foam on top of the drink.
White sugar
Sweetens the drink, balancing the bitterness of the coffee.

The step that matters

Pour the coffee and boiling milk in equal quantities. Combining the hot coffee and boiling milk in equal parts keeps the drink hot and balanced. Stirring gently avoids breaking up the milk while blending the two liquids evenly.

“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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