Skip to main content
Drink

Tea and Coffee

A beverage prepared by brewing tea or coffee with optional additions such as cream, butter, egg, or dried fish-skin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Tea and Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tea

  1. Scald the teapot with boiling water.

  2. For tea, use 1 teaspoon of black tea per person, or a mix of half black and half green tea.

  3. Brew the tea with a good quantity of cream or milk and sugar to taste.

Make the coffee

  1. For coffee, dry the coffee beans before roasting them quickly, stirring frequently.

  2. Once roasted to a dark brown, add a bit of butter if desired.

  3. Grind the coffee just before using.

  4. Pour hot water over the ground coffee and let it boil for 10 minutes.

  5. Optionally, mix in a pounded egg or a piece of dried fish-skin at the start.

  6. After boiling, add a glass of cold water to clarify the coffee.

  7. Serve with boiling hot milk.

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 + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Coffee + beanstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together289 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Black tea + coffeetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Black tea
Provides the main flavour and tannin base of the tea.
Coffee beans
Provide the roasted flavour and aroma that the coffee is built on.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and softens the bitterness of the brewed tea.
Egg
Optionally added to the coffee to help clarify the brew.

The step that matters

Adding the cold water after boiling. Cold water added to just-boiled coffee makes the grounds settle quickly, so the liquid runs clearer. Adding it too early or skipping the boil leaves the coffee cloudy and muddy.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (black tea, cream, sugar, coffee, butter, egg, fish):

  1. Cocoafits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against black tea, cream, sugar, coffee, butter, egg, fish. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

More tea and coffee recipes

Rumford's Substitute 3 See all 4 →

You might also like

Brown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesEgg CoffeeEgg Coffee20 recipesCoffee MilkCoffee Milk12 recipesPostum CoffeePostum Coffee9 recipes