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On Coffee-making

A method for brewing coffee using a percolator, butter or oil, boiling water, and optional milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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

  1. Grind coffee beans coarsely, similar to the size of rifle gunpowder.

  2. Heat the coffee pot thoroughly.

  3. Fill the upper chamber of the percolator with ground coffee, using 1 tablespoon per person.

Brew and serve

  1. Pour boiling water over the coffee in small amounts, allowing it to soak slowly.

  2. Once brewed, pour the coffee into cups.

  3. For café au lait, add boiling milk; for café noir, add a little boiling water.

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
Provide the flavor compounds that are extracted into the brewed drink.
Boiling water
Extracts flavor from the ground coffee as it soaks through.
Boiling milk
Adds creaminess and mellows the coffee's bitterness in café au lait.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling water slowly in small amounts. Pouring slowly lets the water soak evenly through the grounds, so extraction is even. Pouring too fast can leave the coffee 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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