Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 ↓
Coffee, to Make
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the coffee
Put ground coffee into a pot.
Pour boiling water over the coffee and stir several times.
Place the pot on the fire.
Boil and settle
Once it boils, pour out a cupful and return it to the pot.
Let it boil a second time.
Pour out another cupful and return it to the pot.
Set the coffee pot by the fire.
Gently pour a cup of cold water over the pot.
Let it settle for a few minutes before serving hot.
Finish with egg
Beat an egg with the coffee if using over 3 pints.
Mix the egg with the coffee to form a paste.
Fill the pot with cold water.
Simmer gently for an hour without stirring.
Serve hot.
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.
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Coffee + creamtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,339 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).
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Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together4,344 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together42,166 recipes
Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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
- Ground coffee
- Provides the main coffee flavor and aroma in the brewed drink.
- Egg
- Binds the fine grounds into a paste so they settle, clearing the liquid.
- Cream
- Adds richness and softens the coffee's bitterness.
The step that matters
Gently pour cold water and let it settle. Pouring the cold water gently keeps the grounds from churning back up. Cold water cools the surface and helps the grounds sink, so the coffee clears before it is served. Stirring at this point would stir the grounds back into the liquid.
“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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