Why it works: Milk and coffee 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 milk
Heat the milk in a saucepan until it begins to boil.
Add the ground coffee and unrefined sugar to the boiling milk.
Let the mixture boil for a short time.
Serve
Serve and enjoy, but fast for four hours after drinking.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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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Milk + coffeetop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,202 recipes
Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
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Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together4,344 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 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
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base and adds richness and a creamy body to the drink.
- Ground coffee
- Provides the main coffee flavor and aroma, along with some bitterness.
- Unrefined sugar
- Adds sweetness and subtle caramel notes that balance the coffee's bitterness.
The step that matters
Watch the milk as it reaches a boil. Milk foams up and can boil over within seconds. Boiling it for too long can scorch the bottom of the pan and give the drink a cooked, burnt taste.
“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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