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Drink

Crust Coffee

A beverage made by boiling a crust of brown bread in water, then adding cream and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Crust Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Toast the crust

  1. Dry the crust of brown bread until almost black.

Brew and sweeten

  1. Place the crust in a saucepan and pour boiling water over it.

  2. Boil for 1 minute, then strain the liquid.

  3. Return the liquid to the pan, add cream and sugar, and boil again.

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. Bread + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,789 recipes

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

  3. Bread + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,638 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

Brown bread crust
Toasting it darkens the crust and adds roasted, bitter-sweet flavour to the liquid.
Cream
Adds fat for a richer, smoother body and softens the coffee-like bitterness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the roasted, slightly bitter flavour.

The step that matters

Drying the crust until almost black. Toasting causes browning reactions that build roasted flavour. Going too far turns the crust acrid and bitter, and that flavour carries into the finished drink.

“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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