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Drink

Iced Coffee

A cold coffee brewed with salt, sweetened, and served with iced milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Iced Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Make the coffee

  1. Put the coffee into a quart coffee pot. Add two pinches of salt.

  2. Pour in boiling water, leaving room for it to boil up.

  3. Place on the fire and let it boil up, then remove for a few seconds.

  4. Let it boil up again and fill to the top with boiling water.

Chill and serve

  1. Let it stand until completely cold, then pour off carefully and strain.

  2. When ready to serve, sweeten to taste and add iced milk in equal quantity.

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. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and milk 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

Coffee
Provides the main flavor and the dark color of the drink.
Iced milk
Mellows the bitterness of the coffee and adds creaminess when served.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, adjusted to taste at serving.

The step that matters

Letting the coffee boil up and then stand until completely cold. Brewing with boiling water extracts strong, bitter flavors, and cooling slowly before pouring off and straining lets the grounds settle so the drink stays clear and smooth rather than muddy.

“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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