Skip to main content
Drink

Black Coffee

A coffee beverage sweetened and flavored with liquor, typically brandy or kirsch, and ignited before serving.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Black Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare coffee using your preferred method.

  2. Pour coffee into cups.

  3. Sweeten the coffee to taste.

Flame the liquor

  1. Add 2 teaspoons of kirschwasser or brandy to each cup.

  2. Light the liquor.

  3. Allow the liquor to burn out.

  4. Cover the cup with a napkin.

  5. Place sugar and liquor on top of the napkin.

  6. Light the sugar and liquor.

  7. Stir slightly until the liquor has burned out.

  8. Remove the napkin.

  9. Stir the coffee before drinking.

Flame the sugar

  1. Place sugar in a deep dish.

  2. Pour liquor over the sugar.

  3. Light the liquor.

  4. Stir lightly while it burns.

  5. Once the liquor has burned out, add the desired amount of sugar to each cup.

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

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

  2. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  3. Coffee + brandytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together213 recipes

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

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Coffee
Forms the base of the drink and carries the flavour of the liquor and sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the coffee and, when flamed, caramelises slightly with the burning liquor.
Kirschwasser or brandy
Adds aroma and flavour; burning it off leaves a warm, mellow note in the coffee.

The step that matters

Allowing the liquor to burn out before drinking. Alcohol vapour ignites readily, so the flame must be given time to die out on its own. Covering or smothering the flame cuts off oxygen, and lingering liquor can leave a harsh, boozy taste.

“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.

You might also like

Brown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesEgg CoffeeEgg Coffee20 recipesCoffee MilkCoffee Milk12 recipesPostum CoffeePostum Coffee9 recipes