Why it works: Coffee and lemon work together. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 578 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
Iced Coffee
Ingredients
Directions
Brew coffee at half its usual strength.
Chill the coffee.
Serve the chilled coffee with a slice of lemon.
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.
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Coffee + lemontop 26% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together578 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Coffee
- Provides the main flavor and bitterness; brewing it at half strength keeps it from tasting thin or harsh once ice melts in.
The step that matters
Brew coffee at half its usual strength. Chilling dulls flavor, and melting ice dilutes the drink further. Starting with a concentrated brew at half strength would make it taste watery, so brewing at half strength is the key to a balanced result.
“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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