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Drink

Crust Coffee

A coffee made by steeping browned stale bread crumbs in boiling water, served with cream and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Crust Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the bread

  1. Brown slices of stale bread in a 300°F (150°C) oven until dark brown.

  2. Break the bread into small pieces or roll fine with a rolling pin.

Make the coffee

  1. Combine 1 tablespoon of the browned crumbs with 1 cup of boiling water.

  2. Let steep for a few minutes, then strain.

  3. Serve with cream and sugar.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Bread + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,789 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Bread + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,638 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Browning in the oven gives the drink its dark, roasted, coffee-like flavour.
Boiling water
Extracts flavour and colour from the browned bread crumbs as it steeps.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the roasted bitterness of the brew.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the roasted, slightly bitter flavour.

The step that matters

Browning the bread until dark brown. Bread that is only lightly toasted gives a weak, bland flavour. Browning it deeply develops the roasted, caramelised notes that give the drink its coffee-like character, so the colour should be dark brown throughout.

“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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