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A beverage made by roasting cracked wheat with molasses and boiling the mixture with water, served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and sorghum share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Home Coffee

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Roast the wheat

  1. Mix the cracked wheat and molasses in a bowl.

  2. Place the mixture in a 300°F (150°C) oven until well browned, stirring occasionally to prevent burning.

Brew

  1. In a pot, boil 6 tablespoons of the browned mixture in 2 quarts of water over low heat for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream.

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 + sorghumtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together18 recipes

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

  2. Wheat + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together681 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Sorghum + creamtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Cracked wheat
Forms the bulk of the coffee, and its starches and proteins brown into roasted flavour in the oven.
Molasses
Coats the wheat and caramelises as it browns, adding colour, sweetness and a deeper roasted flavour.

The step that matters

Roasting until well browned, stirring occasionally. Molasses sugars and the wheat's starches can go from brown to burnt quickly in a hot oven. Stirring exposes every grain to the heat evenly, so the mixture browns through without scorched patches, which would taste bitter in the brew.

“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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