Name: Coffee or Chocolate Junket
Ingredients: strong coffee; milk; sugar; rennet; best quality chocolate; cold water; boiling milk

Why it works: Coffee and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,497 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells buttery, creamy. The science ↓

Coffee or Chocolate Junket

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare strong coffee and sweeten to taste.
For coffee, add 1 teaspoon of rennet for each pint of milk used.
For chocolate, dissolve chocolate in cold water over heat until thick.
Add boiling milk to the chocolate paste and sweeten.
When lukewarm, add rennet and place in a cool area.

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.

Coffee + chocolatetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,497 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).
Coffee + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,202 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,404 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,128 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,344 recipes

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