Name: Malt Coffee
Ingredients: malt; hot water; cocoa butter or similar fatty matter; bicarbonate of soda; sugar

Why it works: Cocoa butter and sugar share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 49 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Malt Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 104°F (40°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Soak the malt in water at 104°F (40°C).
Dry the malt in a coffee roaster until glossy brown.
Sprinkle the malt with hot water and continue roasting until the skin loosens.
Spray the malt with a coffee liquid made from condensed coffee roasting vapors.
Continue heating the malt until dry.
Remove from heat and let cool slightly.
Add a little cocoa butter and rotate until the malt is lightly greased.
Prepare the coffee liquid by boiling the condensed vapors and neutralizing with bicarbonate of soda.
Add sugar to the liquid to create a syrup for spraying.

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.

Cocoa butter + sugartop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together49 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Malt + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together325 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Malt + cocoa buttertop 60% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1 recipe