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Drink

Turkish Coffee

Turkish coffee is brewed by boiling ground coffee with water, optionally adding sugar, then poured into cups.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Coffee and beans work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 289 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Turkish Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pound or grind the coffee beans well.

Brew

  1. Combine the coffee and water in a small brass pot.

  2. If desired, add sugar before boiling.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Remove from heat, stir, and bring to a boil again.

  5. Pour into small cups, allowing grounds to settle if preferred.

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. Coffee + beanstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together289 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

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

  3. Beans + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,587 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Coffee beans
Provide the main flavour; finer grinding releases more of the aroma and oils into the water.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness of the coffee.

The step that matters

Remove from heat, stir, and bring to a boil again. Boiling too hard or too long can overflow the pot and scorch the grounds, giving a bitter, burnt taste. Pulling the pot off the heat before it foams keeps the coffee smooth and lets the grounds settle.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Cocoafits better
  2. Hazelnutfits better
  3. Nutsfits better
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against coffee, sugar. 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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