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Drink

Corn Coffee

A beverage made by browning corn, mixing with egg white, steeping in boiling water, and served with cream and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Corn Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the corn

  1. Brown the corn until dark but not burnt.

  2. Pound or grind the corn coarsely in a coffee grinder.

Brew and serve

  1. Mix the egg white with the ground corn.

  2. Pour boiling water over the mixture and steep for 10-15 minutes.

  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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

  4. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Corn + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Common field corn
Browned and ground, it supplies the roasted flavour that gives the drink its coffee-like character.
Egg white
Mixed with the ground corn, it may help clarify the brew by binding fine particles.
Ground corn
Steeped in boiling water, it releases the roasted flavour and colour into the liquid.

The step that matters

Browning the corn. Corn browned until dark but not burnt develops roasted flavours through the Maillard reaction and caramelisation. Burnt corn turns bitter, while under-browned corn tastes flat and grassy.

“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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