Why it works: Coffee and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,344 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
Ratafia De Cafe
Ingredients
Directions
Infuse
Combine the ground coffee and proof spirit in a large container.
Infuse for one week, stirring every other day.
After a week, strain the mixture to remove the coffee grounds.
Sweeten
Add the loaf sugar and stir until fully dissolved.
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 + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together4,344 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Coffee + spirittop 24% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together31 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Spirit + sugartop 25% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together602 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Fresh roasted mocha coffee
- Provides the main coffee aroma and flavor that the spirit extracts over the infusion.
- Proof spirit
- Acts as the solvent that draws flavor and aroma out of the ground coffee.
- Loaf sugar
- Adds sweetness and softens the bitterness and sharpness of the spirit.
The step that matters
Straining off the coffee grounds. Leaving grounds in the spirit lets the infusion keep extracting bitterness and cloudiness over time, so the mixture should be strained once the flavor is reached.
“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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