Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
On Coffee -making
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.
Roast and grind
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Grease the coffee beans with a little butter or salad oil to retain fragrance while roasting.
Roast the coffee beans until they are a beautiful pale snuff color.
Grind the roasted coffee beans to a fine powder.
Brew and serve
Heat the coffee pot thoroughly.
Fill the upper chamber of the percolator with the ground coffee, using 1 tablespoon per person.
Pour boiling water over the coffee powder slowly, in teaspoonfuls, to ensure thorough soaking.
Once the coffee has dripped through, pour it into cups.
For cafe au lait, fill cups with boiling milk; for cafe noir, add a little boiling water.
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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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Coffee + milktop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,202 recipes
Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
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Butter + coffeetop 23% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Provides the main flavour and aroma of the drink.
- Butter or salad oil
- Coats the beans to help hold in their aroma while roasting.
- Boiling water
- Extracts flavour from the ground coffee as it drips through.
- Boiling milk
- Adds creaminess and softens the coffee's bitterness in cafe au lait.
The step that matters
Roast the coffee beans until pale snuff color. Roasting develops the coffee's flavour and aroma. Stopping too early leaves the taste flat, while roasting too long makes it bitter and burnt-tasting.
“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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