Name: Coffee Essence
Ingredients: 1¼ pounds coffee (best Java and Mocha mixed), ground fine; 1 pint water; 2 tablespoons coffee essence per cup of hot milk; Thick sweet cream (or 1 egg white, stiffly beaten, as a substitute)

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 ↓

Coffee Essence

Ingredients

1¼ pounds coffee (best Java and Mocha mixed), ground fine
1 pint water
2 tablespoons coffee essence per cup of hot milk
Thick sweet cream (or 1 egg white, stiffly beaten, as a substitute)

Directions

Make the essence

Place the ground coffee in a percolator.
Simmer the coffee in 1 pint of boiling water for 20 minutes without boiling.
Once cool, bottle or cork the coffee essence.

Serve

To serve, mix 2 tablespoons of coffee essence with a cup of hot milk.
Add thick sweet cream or the beaten egg white for a richer flavor.

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.

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).
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

Coffee: Provides the concentrated coffee flavor that the essence carries into the milk.
Thick sweet cream: Adds fat and body, giving the drink a richer texture and mouthfeel.
Egg white: Whipped to a stiff foam, it adds light volume and a frothy texture to the drink.

“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.