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To Roast Coffee

A method for roasting coffee berries with butter, sugar, and optional chicory, then brewing the roasted beans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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To Roast Coffee

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Roast Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Roast and warm

  1. Add the butter and sugar to the roaster with the coffee and roast the berries.

  2. If using chicory, add it to the coffee in a 1:4 ratio.

  3. Warm 4 tablespoons of roasted coffee berries in the oven.

Brew

  1. Grind the warmed coffee and place it in a coffee pot with a piece of tin over the strainer.

  2. Pour in 3 teacups of boiling water and let it steep.

Serve

  1. Fill the breakfast cup with boiling milk before serving.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

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

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

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Coffee
Provides the main roasted flavour and aroma, which are extracted into the hot water.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and gives the roasted berries a richer, smoother character.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and promotes browning during roasting, helping develop deeper colour and flavour.
Chicory
Adds earthy, bitter notes and some body to the coffee blend.
Boiling water
Acts as the solvent that extracts soluble flavour compounds from the ground coffee.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the coffee's bitterness.

The step that matters

Roasting the berries with butter and sugar. Sugar browns and can scorch quickly at roasting temperatures, while the butter helps spread heat and coat the beans. Stirring constantly keeps the roast even and prevents bitter, burnt flavours.

“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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