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Drink

Ways of Making Coffee

A method for preparing coffee using boiling water, coffee grounds, cold water, and milk.

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

Ways of Making Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pour boiling water over the coffee and let it infuse for 10 minutes without boiling.

  2. Heat the pot before adding the coffee.

  3. Pour out 1 cup of coffee and pour it back quickly; let it stand for a minute to settle.

  4. Gently pour through a strainer into warm cups.

  5. Add a tablespoon of cold water to help settle the grounds.

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 + 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 flavor compounds that are extracted into the hot water.
Boiling water
Extracts flavor from the grounds and sets the brewing temperature.
Milk
Adds richness and softens the coffee's bitterness.

The step that matters

Infuse without boiling. Water that boils over the grounds extracts more bitter compounds and can taste harsh. Holding the coffee just below boiling for the full 10 minutes gives a smoother, balanced extraction.

“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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