Why it works: Coffee and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,202 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓
On Coffee-making
Ingredients
Directions
Make the coffee
Measure the amount of coffee liquid you need.
Pour boiling water slowly, in teaspoonfuls, through the upper strainer onto the coffee powder.
Allow the coffee to drip through completely.
Pour the coffee essence into cups.
Serve
For café au lait, fill cups with boiling milk.
For café noir, add a little boiling water.
Keep the coffee pot in a shallow vessel of boiling water to maintain heat.
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.
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Coffee + milktop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,202 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
- Coffee powder
- Provides the coffee flavour and aroma that the dripping water extracts.
- Boiling water
- Extracts flavour from the coffee powder and sets the strength of the coffee.
- Boiling milk
- Adds creaminess and mellows the coffee's bitterness in café au lait.
The step that matters
Pouring the boiling water slowly, in teaspoonfuls. Adding water slowly lets it soak through the coffee powder evenly. Pouring too fast can leave the grounds under-extracted and the coffee weak, or wash through without flavour.
“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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