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Drink

Coffee

A coffee beverage made by mixing egg with roasted coffee and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Coffee

Why it works: Coffee and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,239 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pot

  1. Clean the coffee pot inside and out.

  2. Polish the coffee pot inside and out.

  3. Put the roasted coffee in the pot.

  4. Close the pot.

  5. Heat the pot on low heat for a few minutes until the coffee is just hot.

  6. Shake the pot to heat evenly.

Add the egg

  1. In a cup, stir an egg.

  2. Crush the egg shell with the egg.

  3. Add the egg mixture to the coffee.

  4. Stir the mixture with a fork.

  5. Gradually pour in 1 quart of boiling water while stirring.

Brew and serve

  1. Close the pot.

  2. Boil for 10 minutes.

  3. Lift the cover.

  4. Stir quickly.

  5. Pour a little coffee into a cup.

  6. Return the cup to the pot.

  7. Shut the pot tight.

  8. Keep it simmering hot.

  9. Do not let it boil.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,239 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Roasted and ground coffee
Provides the main coffee flavour and aroma that the brew extracts into the water.
Egg
Its proteins bind to the coffee grounds, helping them settle and clarifying the brew.

The step that matters

Do not let it boil.. Once the egg and coffee are combined, boiling vigorously can agitate the grounds back into the liquid and make the coffee cloudy and bitter. Keeping it simmering hot lets the grounds settle while the egg clarifies the brew.

“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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