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On Coffee-making

A method for roasting and brewing coffee beans with optional butter, oil, milk, or water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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

Prepare the beans

  1. Grind coffee beans to a consistency similar to rifle gunpowder.

  2. Add a little butter or salad oil to the coffee beans before roasting to retain fragrance.

  3. Roast the coffee beans until they are a beautiful pale snuff color.

Brew

  1. Use a percolator for brewing; fill the upper chamber with ground coffee, using 1 tablespoon per person.

  2. Heat the coffee pot thoroughly and firmly pack the coffee grounds.

  3. Measure the amount of coffee liquid needed and pour boiling water over the grounds slowly, in teaspoonfuls.

  4. Once brewed, pour the coffee essence into cups and add boiling milk for cafe au lait or a little boiling water for cafe noir.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Coffee + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

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

  4. Beans + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,266 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  5. Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,799 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Coffee beans
Supply the flavor and aroma compounds that are extracted into the finished coffee.
Butter or salad oil
Added before roasting to help retain the coffee's fragrance.
Boiling milk
Adds creaminess and softens the coffee's bitterness in cafe au lait.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling water over the grounds slowly. Pouring slowly lets hot water saturate the grounds evenly and extract flavor steadily; pouring too fast can leave the brew weak or uneven.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Cocoafits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Peanutfits better
  4. Beansthe original

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