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Drink

Rye Coffee

A beverage made by roasting, grinding rye and wheat, then boiling with water and sweetening with molasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Rye and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Rye Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and dry the rye and wheat.

Roast and grind

  1. Roast the grains until they are a nice brown.

  2. Grind the roasted grains.

Brew and serve

  1. Boil 4 cups of water and add 2 tablespoons of the ground mixture for each cup.

  2. Boil for five minutes.

  3. Sweeten with molasses.

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. Rye + wheattop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Rye + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Wheat + molassestop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together702 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Rye
Roasted rye gives the brew its dark colour and toasty, earthy flavour.
Wheat
Roasted wheat adds body and a nutty, malty roasted flavour to the brew.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and a deep, caramel-like richness to the finished drink.

The step that matters

Roast the grains until they are a nice brown. Roasting drives the Maillard reaction and caramelisation, which create the colour and flavour of the drink. Under-roasted grains taste raw and grassy, while over-roasted grains turn bitter and acrid, so watch colour closely.

“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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