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Drink

Crust Coffee

A beverage made by steeping toasted bread crusts in boiling water, served with 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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Toast the crusts of wheat bread or graham biscuits in a 400°F (200°C) oven until thoroughly browned but not burned.

  2. Break the toasted crusts into pieces.

Brew and serve

  1. Pour boiling water over the pieces and let them steep.

  2. Serve with cream and 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. Wheat + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together681 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Wheat + sugartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,071 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Wheat bread crusts or graham biscuits
Toasting browns them, building a roasted, nutty flavour that becomes the coffee-like taste in the brew.
Boiling water
Extracts flavour and colour from the toasted pieces as it steeps.
Cream
Adds fat and softness, mellowing the brew's roasted bitterness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the roasted flavour.

The step that matters

Toast until browned, not burned. Browning produces the roasted flavours that make the brew taste like coffee. Burnt pieces add harsh bitterness that no amount of cream or sugar fully hides.

“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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