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Drink

Cereal Coffee

A beverage made by mixing wheat bran, cornmeal, malt extract, and boiling water, then baking the mixture and using it as a coffee substitute.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Cereal Coffee

Why it works: Wheat and malt work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 64 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Cereal Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the mixture

  1. Mix the wheat bran and cornmeal in a bowl.

  2. Dissolve the malt extract in the boiling water.

  3. Pour the malt mixture over the bran and cornmeal and mix well.

Bake and use

  1. Spread the mixture in a baking dish and bake at 400°F (200°C) until dark brown.

  2. Use 1 tablespoon of the mixture for every cup of coffee.

  3. Cook slowly for 15 minutes.

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.

  1. Wheat + malttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together64 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Wheat bran
Forms the bulk of the mixture and bakes into the dry, toasty grounds.
Cornmeal
Adds body and helps the mixture brown as it bakes.
Malt extract
Adds sweetness and helps the mixture darken and caramelize in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until dark brown. Browning develops the roasted, coffee-like flavor through Maillard reactions and caramelization. Pulling the mixture early leaves it pale and flat-tasting, while overbaking can make it bitter.

“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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