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To Roast Coffee

A method for roasting coffee beans with butter added before serving.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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To Roast Coffee

Why it works: Coffee and walnut work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 289 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

To Roast Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Dry and roast

  1. Dry the coffee in the oven at 300°F (150°C) for 1-2 hours before roasting.

  2. When ready, place the coffee in a coffee roaster or a round-bottomed iron kettle over heat.

  3. Stir constantly until the coffee turns light brown.

  4. Add the walnut-sized piece of butter just before removing from heat.

Store

  1. Transfer the hot coffee into a tightly covered box.

  2. Grind the coffee as needed.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Coffee + walnuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together289 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Coffee + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,442 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Coffee
Forms the whole body of the drink; roasting develops its color, aroma and flavor.
Butter
Adds fat that coats the beans, giving a richer, smoother flavor and aroma.

The step that matters

Stirring constantly while roasting. Beans roast unevenly and can scorch on the hot surface if they are not kept moving. Scorching brings bitter, burnt flavors, so stirring until the coffee is light brown keeps the roast even.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (coffee, butter):

  1. Cocoafits better
  2. Pecansfits about as well
  3. Hazelnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against coffee, butter. 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.

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