Skip to main content
Drink

Cafe Au Lait

A French-style coffee brewed with freshly ground coffee, boiled water, and heated milk served in equal parts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Cafe Au Lait

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

serves 6

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the coffee

  1. Prepare a clean French coffee filter on the hot range.

  2. Place the coffee in the filter and cover with a small strainer.

  3. Gradually pour ½ pint of boiling water over the coffee and let it rest for 3 minutes.

  4. Pour an additional 2.5 pints of boiling water over the coffee, ensuring it does not boil again.

  5. Once all has dripped through, pour the coffee into a hot coffee pot.

Serve

  1. Heat 3 pints of milk until hot but not boiling, and pour it into a hot pitcher.

  2. Serve with six hot cups, filling each with half coffee and half 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.

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.

  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

Freshly ground coffee
Provides the main coffee flavour and body of the drink.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the bitterness of the coffee.

The step that matters

Pouring the water over the coffee. Water that has boiled again or is too hot can scorch the grounds and make the coffee bitter. Pouring the first portion and letting it rest lets the grounds bloom and release gas, so the extraction is even.

“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.

You might also like

Brown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesEgg CoffeeEgg Coffee20 recipesCoffee MilkCoffee Milk12 recipesPostum CoffeePostum Coffee9 recipes