Name: Coffee
Ingredients: freshly roasted coffee beans; boiling water

Why it works: Coffee and beans work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 289 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Coffee

Ingredients

freshly roasted coffee beans
boiling water

Directions

Grind the coffee beans just before use.
Place the ground coffee in a cafetière or a muslin bag inside a coffee pot.
Pour a little boiling water over the coffee to heat the pot, then discard the water.
Pour boiling water gradually over the coffee, allowing it to drain through.
Serve the coffee hot in the pot it was made in.

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.

Coffee + beanstop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together289 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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