Name: Making Good Coffee
Ingredients: 1 part coffee; 7 parts water; 1 large tablespoon cold water; good cream (optional)

Why it works: Coffee and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,339 recipes. Both carry 2-heptanol, which smells bitter, floral. The science ↓

Making Good Coffee

Ingredients

1 part coffee
7 parts water
1 large tablespoon cold water
good cream (optional)

Directions

Place the coffee in the pot.
Add boiling water.
Boil the coffee and water together for 5 minutes.
Pour in a large tablespoon of cold water to settle the grounds.
Serve immediately with good cream, if possible.

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.

Coffee + creamtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,339 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Coffee: Provides the main flavour and aroma that the water extracts during boiling.
Cold water: Cooling the surface settles the grounds so the finished coffee pours clearer.

“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.