Name: Good Coffee
Ingredients: heaped 2 teaspoons ground coffee per person; boiling water; boiling milk; cream; sugar candy

Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Good Coffee

heaped 2 teaspoons ground coffee per person

Ingredients

Directions

Brew the coffee

Place the ground coffee in an earthenware coffee pot.
Stand the pot in a pan of boiling water.
Pour boiling water over the coffee.
Once brewed, remove the upper part of the pot and cover the lower part with the lid.

Serve

Serve with boiling milk, cream, and sugar candy.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Coffee + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,202 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Coffee + creamtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,339 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).
Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,344 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together29,399 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground coffee: Provides the main coffee flavour and body that the hot water extracts.
Boiling milk: Adds creaminess and softens the bitterness of the coffee.
Cream: Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel.
Sugar candy: Adds sweetness to balance the coffee's bitterness.

“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.