Skip to main content
Drink

Prairie Coffee

A dried cake coffee beverage made by boiling water with coffee and dried dough cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Wheat and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,373 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Prairie 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.

Make the cakes

  1. Mix cornmeal, wheat flour, molasses, salt, and enough water to form a stiff dough.

  2. Roll the dough thin and cut out shapes like yeast cakes.

  3. Place the cakes in a pan and dry them in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  4. Once thoroughly dry, brown the cakes very dark.

Brew

  1. To use, add 2 or 3 cakes and 1 tablespoon of coffee to a pot.

  2. Pour on boiling water, let it boil, and then settle.

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. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Wheat + coffeetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together105 recipes

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

  3. Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Molasses + coffeetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together640 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Flour + coffeetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Provides the bulk and coarse, grainy structure of the cakes.
Wheat flour
Binds the dough so it can be rolled thin and cut into shapes.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown deeply in the oven.

The step that matters

Browning the cakes very dark. Browning develops the roasted, bitter flavour that gives the drink its coffee-like character. Cakes that are only partly browned, or not fully dried first, will taste flat and may not store well.

“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.

You might also like

Brown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesEgg CoffeeEgg Coffee20 recipesCoffee MilkCoffee Milk12 recipesPostum CoffeePostum Coffee9 recipes