Why it works: Chicory and coffee work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50 recipes. Both carry maltol, which smells caramel, sweet. The science ↓
Chicory Coffee
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the chicory
Cut the full-grown chicory root into slices.
Roast the sliced chicory root in heat with a little lard until browned.
Grind the roasted chicory root to a powder.
Blend and brew
Mix 1 part of the ground chicory with 10-12 parts of ground coffee.
Brew the mixture as you would regular coffee.
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.
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Chicory + coffeetop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together50 recipes
Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Roasted chicory
- Adds a roasted, slightly bitter flavour and body that stretches the coffee.
- Roasted coffee
- Provides the main coffee flavour and aroma in the blend.
- Lard
- Helps the chicory root brown during roasting, adding a little fat to the surface.
The step that matters
Roast the sliced chicory root until browned. Roasting develops the browned, caramelised flavour that the chicory contributes. Underroasted chicory tastes raw and grassy, while overroasted chicory turns acrid and burnt.
“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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