Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 ↓
Coffee, to Make
Ingredients
Directions
Brew
Put a sufficient quantity of ground coffee into a pot and pour boiling water over it.
Stir several times.
Place the pot on the fire.
As soon as it boils, pour out a cupful and return it.
Let it boil a second time and repeat.
Set the coffee pot by the side of the fire and gently pour a cup of cold water over the top.
Alternative method
For the alternative method, beat an egg and mix it with the ground coffee until it forms a paste.
Put the paste into the coffee pot.
Fill with cold water.
Let it simmer gently for an hour without stirring.
Do not let it boil.
Leave it to settle for a few minutes and serve hot.
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.
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Coffee + creamtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,339 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).
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Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together4,344 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together42,166 recipes
Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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
- Ground coffee
- Provides the main coffee flavour and aroma, extracted into the water during brewing.
- Egg
- Binds the ground coffee into a paste and helps the grounds settle clear of the liquid.
The step that matters
Let it simmer gently without boiling. Boiling the coffee again after the initial brewing can make it bitter and over-extracted, and it can stir the grounds back into the liquid. A gentle simmer extracts flavour more smoothly while the grounds settle.
“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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