Skip to main content
Drink

Coca and Kola Drinks

A beverage made by macerating coca leaves with lime, alcohol, and water, then percolating and draining.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Coca and Kola Drinks

2½ gallons total yield

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the leaves

  1. Grind the coca leaves to a coarse powder.

  2. Pulverize the lime and mix it with the dry coca leaves.

  3. Mix the alcohol and distilled water, then add to the leaves until saturated.

  4. Pack the leaves in a percolator and tamp down firmly.

Percolate

  1. Pour the remaining alcohol and water mixture into the percolator.

  2. When liquid begins to drop, close the lower orifice and cover the percolator.

  3. Macerate for 48 hours.

  4. Open the percolator and let it drip for 12 hours.

  5. Close the percolator and pour in 1 gallon of boiling water.

  6. Let it stand for 24 hours.

  7. Open the percolator and let it drip until the total measures 2½ gallons.

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

What each ingredient does

Dark green coca leaves
Provides the main plant material whose compounds are extracted into the liquid.
95% alcohol
Acts as the solvent that dissolves compounds from the leaves.
Distilled water
Works with the alcohol as a solvent to extract material from the leaves.
Chemically pure lime
Mixed with the leaves to alter the extraction chemistry during percolation.

The step that matters

Packing and saturating the leaves. The leaves must be evenly wetted and firmly packed so the solvent moves through them uniformly. Loose or dry spots let liquid channel past the material, leaving it under-extracted.

“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.

You might also like

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes