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Drink

Wheat Coffee

A beverage made by roasting whole-wheat grain, glazing with egg whites and salt, then grinding and brewing like coffee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Wheat Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Roast and glaze

  1. Roast the whole-wheat grain until brown.

  2. Remove from the roaster and stir in the beaten egg whites and a pinch of salt until the grain is glazed.

Store and grind

  1. Store in a tin or jar away from light.

  2. Grind enough for immediate use.

Brew

  1. Use 3 tablespoons per quart of water.

  2. Grind finely and drip brew like coffee, using earthenware or porcelain pots for better aroma.

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 + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Whole-wheat grain
Forms the base of the drink, and roasting it develops the brown, coffee-like flavor.
Egg whites
Coat the roasted grain as a thin glaze so the grain holds together as it is handled.

The step that matters

Roast the grain until brown. Browning through Maillard reactions and caramelization creates the roasted flavor and aroma that make this taste like coffee. Grain removed too early stays pale and tastes flat.

“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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