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Drink

Coffee Extract

A concentrated coffee beverage made by steeping ground coffee and chicory in water, then sweetened with caramel sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Coffee and chicory work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50 recipes. Both carry maltol, which smells caramel, sweet. The science ↓

Coffee Extract

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the extract

  1. Boil 8 quarts of water.

  2. Add 16 lbs of ground coffee and 10 lbs of chicory.

  3. Let steep for 30 minutes.

  4. Pour off the liquid and strain the grounds through a coarse flannel strainer.

Finish

  1. When cold, add 20 lbs of caramel sugar.

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.

  1. Coffee + chicorytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

  2. Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Chicory + sugartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together63 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground coffee
Provides the main coffee flavor and aroma that the water draws out during steeping.
Chicory
Adds a roasted, slightly bitter body that deepens the flavor of the coffee extract.
Caramel sugar
Adds sweetness and a toasted caramel note that softens the coffee's bitterness.

The step that matters

Adding the caramel sugar only when cold. Sugar dissolves well in cooling liquid, while adding it to hot extract can scorch it or darken the flavor unevenly. Waiting keeps the sweetness clean and the color consistent.

“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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