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Drink

Wheat Coffee

A beverage made by roasting wheat, glazing with egg whites, and brewing ground wheat with water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Wheat and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Wheat Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Roast and glaze

  1. Roast the whole-wheat grain until brown.

  2. Remove from the roaster and while warm, stir in the beaten egg whites and a pinch of salt until the grain is glazed.

Store and grind

  1. Store the mixture in a jar or tin in a dark place.

  2. Grind only what you need for immediate use until fine.

Brew

  1. For brewing, use 3 tablespoons of ground wheat per quart of water.

  2. Drip brew the mixture without boiling, preferably in an earthenware or porcelain pot for better aroma.

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. Wheat + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Whole-wheat grain
Provides the roasted base that gives the coffee-like flavor and brown color.
Egg whites
Bind to the warm grain so it stays glazed and coated after roasting.

The step that matters

Brewing without boiling. Boiling over-extracts bitter compounds from the roasted grain and can make the drink harsh, so the water should be kept just below boiling.

“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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