Name: Crust Coffee
Ingredients: ½ cup brown entire wheat bread, crushed; 1 pint boiling water; 1 pint milk; 1 tablespoon sugar

Why it works: Wheat and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Crust Coffee

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

½ cup brown entire wheat bread, crushed
1 pint boiling water
1 pint milk
1 tablespoon sugar

Directions

Brown the entire wheat bread until hard and crush it with a rolling pin.
Place ½ cup of the crushed bread in a coffee pot.
Pour 1 pint of boiling water over the bread and boil for 5 minutes.
Add 1 pint of milk and heat the mixture.
Stir in 1 tablespoon of sugar.
Let the coffee settle for 2 to 3 minutes before pouring.

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.

Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,418 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Wheat + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together209 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together77,875 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Wheat + sugartop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,071 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Brown entire wheat bread: Toasted bread supplies the roasted, coffee-like flavour and colour of the drink.
Milk: Adds creaminess and softens the bitter, roasted notes of the brew.
Sugar: Adds sweetness that balances the roasted bread flavour.

“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.