Name: Cafe Au Lait
Ingredients: 1 ounce of coffee; ½ pint of boiling water; ½ pint of boiling milk

Why it works: Coffee and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,202 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Cafe Au Lait

Ingredients

1 ounce of coffee
½ pint of boiling water
½ pint of boiling milk

Directions

Heat an earthenware percolator with boiling water.
Add 1 ounce of coffee to the percolator.
Pour in ½ pint of boiling water.
Pour in ½ pint of boiling milk.
Let the percolator stand on the stove while the water and milk pass through.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Coffee + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,202 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Coffee: Supplies the main flavor and aroma, which hot water draws out of the grounds.
Milk: Adds creaminess and softens the bitterness of the coffee.

“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.