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Drink

Making Coffee

A beverage made by roasting coffee beans, steeping in boiling water, and serving with milk and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Making Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Roast and grind

  1. Roast coffee beans in an enamelled frying pan over a mild fire until they turn rich brown, stirring constantly.

  2. Use 1 tablespoon of coffee powder for each cup of coffee.

Brew

  1. Pour boiling water over the coffee powder in a jug, using ½ cup of water for each tablespoon of coffee.

  2. Let the coffee steep for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the coffee through a linen or cotton bag into a coffee pot.

Serve

  1. To serve, mix ¼ cup of coffee with ¾ cup of boiling milk and add sugar to taste.

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 + beanstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together289 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Beans + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,266 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  4. Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar 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 beans
Roasting browns the beans, developing the rich flavour and aroma that the brew carries.
Boiling water
Extracts flavour from the coffee powder during steeping.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the bitterness of the coffee when mixed in at serving.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, balancing the coffee's bitterness to taste.

The step that matters

Roasting the beans. Roasting stops once the beans turn rich brown, and the stirring keeps them from scorching unevenly. Under-roasting gives a weak, grassy taste, while over-roasting makes the coffee harsh and bitter.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (coffee, milk, sugar):

  1. Cocoafits better
  2. Hazelnutfits better
  3. Peanutfits better
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against coffee, milk, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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