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Drink

Cafe-au-lait

A coffee beverage made with equal parts strong coffee and hot milk, topped with frothy egg whites and sugar.

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 ↓

Cafe-au-lait

Ingredients

Directions

Make the coffee

  1. Pour equal amounts of clear strong coffee and boiling hot fresh milk into a clean coffee urn, alternating and stirring gently.

  2. Cover the urn and let it stand in a warm place for about five minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Whip the egg whites to a froth and stir in the sugar.

  2. Sweeten each cup of coffee as you pour it out.

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).

  2. Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh milk
Adds richness and softness, mellowing the bitterness of the coffee.
Clear strong coffee
Provides the main coffee flavour and aroma that the milk is blended into.
Egg whites
Whipped to a froth, they add a light, airy foam to the top of the drink.
White sugar
Sweetens the drink, added by the cup so each serving can be adjusted.

The step that matters

Combining coffee and milk. The milk must be boiling hot and added alternately with the coffee while stirring gently. Hot milk blends smoothly, while adding it all at once or cold can cause uneven mixing and a less silky texture.

“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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