Name: Iced Coffee
Ingredients: leftover brewed coffee; ice; rich cream; granulated sugar

Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Iced Coffee

Ingredients

leftover brewed coffee
ice
rich cream
granulated sugar

Directions

Prepare

Strain the leftover coffee from breakfast.
Pour the coffee into glass bottles or jars.

Chill and serve

Place the bottles or jars on ice.
Serve the iced coffee with rich cream and granulated 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.

Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Coffee + creamtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,339 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).
Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,344 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

Leftover brewed coffee: Provides the main coffee flavor and body of the drink.
Ice: Chills the coffee quickly, and its meltwater slightly dilutes it.
Rich cream: Adds fat for richness and softens the coffee's bitterness.
Granulated sugar: Adds sweetness and balances the coffee's bitterness.

“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.