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Drink

Iced Coffee

A chilled beverage made from strong coffee, sweet cream, and ice, sweetened to taste.

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 ↓

Iced Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Make the coffee base

  1. Combine equal parts of strong coffee and sweet cream in a pitcher.

  2. Add sugar to taste.

Chill and serve

  1. Pack the pitcher in pounded ice until ready to serve.

  2. Alternatively, chill strong coffee on ice and serve with cracked ice in each glass.

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. Coffee + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,339 recipes

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

  3. Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 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

Strong coffee
Provides the main coffee flavor and bitterness that the drink is built around.
Sweet cream
Adds fat for richness and softens the sharpness of the coffee.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness of the coffee.
Ice
Chills the drink and slowly dilutes it as it melts, changing its strength over time.

The step that matters

Sweetening the cold coffee. Sugar dissolves more slowly in cold liquid than in warm liquid. Stir the sugar into the coffee and cream thoroughly before adding ice, so it does not settle at the bottom of the pitcher.

“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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