Name: Aftee-dinner Coffee
Ingredients: 2 cups coffee; cut sugar; brandy (optional); sweet spices (optional)

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 ↓

Aftee-dinner Coffee

Ingredients

2 cups coffee
cut sugar
brandy (optional)
sweet spices (optional)

Directions

Brew 2 cups of coffee and filter it.
Serve in after-dinner cups with cut sugar.
For added flavor, gentlemen may burn brandy with sweet spices and add it to the coffee.

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.

Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,344 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together11,939 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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: Provides the main bitter, aromatic base of the drink.
Cut sugar: Adds sweetness to balance the coffee's bitterness.
Brandy: Adds alcohol-carried aroma and warmth when burned and mixed into the 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.