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To Make Coffee

A method for brewing coffee by steeping grounds in boiling water and serving with boiling milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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To Make Coffee

Why it works: Coffee and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,202 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

To Make Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Steep the coffee

  1. Heat a small jug.

  2. Add the coffee to the jug.

  3. Pour the boiling water over the coffee.

  4. Let it stand for five minutes in a warm place.

Settle and serve

  1. Pour out a cupful and return it to the jug.

  2. Repeat this two or three times to settle the grounds.

  3. Stand the jug by the fire for another five minutes.

  4. Serve with boiling milk.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Coffee
Supplies the flavour and aroma that the hot water draws out of the grounds.
Boiling water
Extracts flavour and aroma compounds from the coffee grounds during steeping.
Boiling milk
Adds richness and softens the bitter edge of the coffee.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling water over the coffee. The water must be at a full boil so it extracts flavour efficiently from the grounds. Water that is too cool produces weak, flat coffee.

“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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