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Coffee, Essence of

A concentrated coffee flavor made by filtering coffee and chicory, then simmering and bottling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Coffee and chicory work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50 recipes. Both carry maltol, which smells caramel, sweet. The science ↓

Coffee, Essence of

Ingredients

Directions

Make the essence

  1. Use freshly ground and roasted coffee.

  2. Place coffee and chicory in a percolator or filter.

  3. Slowly pour boiling water over the mixture.

  4. Once filtered, warm the coffee to simmering point without boiling.

  5. Filter it a second time and transfer to a clean, dry bottle.

  6. Cork the bottle well; it will last several days.

Serve

  1. To serve, mix 2 tablespoons of essence with hot milk.

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 + chicorytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground coffee
Provides the main coffee flavor and aroma that the water extracts into the essence.
Powdered chicory
Adds a roasted, slightly bitter depth and body to the coffee flavor.

The step that matters

Warming without boiling. Boiling the filtered coffee can drive off aromatic compounds and make the flavor harsh or bitter, so it should only be heated to simmering point.

“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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