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Drink

Cafe Au Lait

A hot beverage made by mixing strong black coffee with scalding milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Cafe Au Lait

Why it works: Coffee and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,202 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Cafe Au Lait

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Brew strong black coffee.

  2. While the coffee is hot, add ⅓ cup of scalding milk.

  3. Cover the mixture and place it in boiling water until needed.

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. Coffee + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Strong black coffee
Provides the bold, bitter base flavour that the milk softens.
Scalding milk
Adds richness and creaminess, mellowing the coffee's bitterness.

“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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