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Drink

English Coffee

A coffee substitute made by roasting horse beans, adding honey, cassia, and grinding the mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Horse and beans work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

English Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Roast the beans

  1. Roast horse beans in a clean frying pan over a clear fire until they darken in color.

  2. Add small bits of honey while stirring until the beans are deep chestnut brown.

Finish and grind

  1. Remove from heat and mix in 1 ounce of cassia mundata, stirring until cool.

  2. Grind the mixture to make it resemble real coffee.

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. Horse + beanstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Beans + cassiatop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Beans + honeytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together254 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Honey + cassiatop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Horse + cassiatop 36% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

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

What each ingredient does

Horse-beans
Roasting browns the beans and develops their deep, toasty flavor, which gives the coffee-like character.
Honey
Caramelizes as it heats, deepening the brown color and adding sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding the honey while stirring. Honey caramelizes and burns quickly at high heat. Adding it in small bits and stirring constantly spreads it evenly and browns the beans without scorching them.

Swap the cassia

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (horse, beans, honey):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Cassiathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against horse, beans, honey. 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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