Why it works: Sweet potato and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 165 recipes. Both carry damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
Hygienic Coffee
Ingredients
Directions
Roast the rye, corn, sweet potatoes, peas, or beans until browned.
Grind the roasted ingredients to a fine powder.
Brew the ground mixture in hot water like regular coffee.
Serve as an occasional drink.
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.
-
Sweet potato + beanstop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together165 recipes
Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).
-
Corn + beanstop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together1,211 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
-
Peas + beanstop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together949 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
-
Corn + sweet potatotop 6% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together153 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
-
Rye + beanstop 6% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together26 recipes
Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the peas
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rye, corn, sweet potato, beans):
- Chickpeafits better
- Lentilsfits better
- Milletfits better
- Peasthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against rye, corn, sweet potato, beans. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
You might also like
The free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.
Vegetable Soup350 recipes
Raspberry Vinegar214 recipes
Brown Coffee with Egg175 recipes
Blackberry Cordial129 recipes