Coffee#1 /

Are you brave enough to take a journey into the unknown realms of molecular gastronomy?

In plain English what that means is flavour pairing – identifying foods which complement each other by sharing the same flavour compounds… often producing some surprising and unusual combinations!

One flavour has been puzzlingly described as making another “taste more like itself”.

We wanted to mix things up a bit and find out what kind of stellar companions we could find for … yep you guessed it … coffee!

There are a few complementary flavours that that may spring to mind -
Coffee and chocolate, coffee and walnut, coffee and rum…

However here are a few creative concoctions you might not have imagined:

Bananas!

Whip up banana and coffee smoothie storm. Or a coffee and choc chip banana loaf to accompany your espresso.

Peanut Butter!

Try vanilla (or chocolate) ice-cream with chilled coffee poured over and some big dollops of peanut butter mashed in. Yummmm!

Liquorice!

The aniseedy Italian liqueur sambucca is traditionally served with coffee beans inside which complement its syrupy liquorice flavour.

Sesame!

The Thais make their coffee finely ground with sesame seeds and hot sweet milk for a rich nutty flavour.

Mint!

For a clean and refreshing summer cocktail, pour iced black coffee over crushed mint leaves.

Potatoes!

We found dozens of recipes for coffee and potato cake! Often with other complementary ingredients such as cinnamon, dried cranberries or rum.

So why not become a taste explorer yourself? We’d love to hear about your coffee discoveries that are truly out of this world!