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Drink

Filtered Coffee

Coffee brewed by filtering boiling water through coffee grounds, served with milk, cream, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Filtered Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Make the coffee

  1. Place 1 cup of coffee in the top of a French coffee pot.

  2. Pour 4 cups of boiling water over the coffee.

  3. Keep the coffee pot hot, but do not let it boil.

  4. Once all the water has been used, pour it through again.

Serve

  1. Serve with hot milk, cream, and loaf sugar.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  3. Coffee + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,339 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  4. Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

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

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Coffee
Provides the flavour and aroma that the hot water extracts.
Boiling water
Extracts the soluble flavour compounds from the coffee grounds.
Hot milk
Softens the coffee's bitterness and adds creaminess.
Cream
Adds richness and body, mellowing the coffee's acidity.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the coffee's bitterness.

The step that matters

Keep the pot hot, but do not let it boil. Water near boiling extracts flavour well, while boiling scalds the grounds and makes the coffee taste harsh and bitter.

“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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