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Drink

To Make Coffee

A method of roasting coffee beans, adding butter, and brewing with ground coffee, egg or fish-skin, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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To Make Coffee

Why it works: Coffee and walnut work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 289 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

To Make Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Roast the coffee

  1. Open the pot for one to two hours before roasting the coffee.

  2. Roast the coffee in an iron pan, stirring constantly until it turns light brown.

  3. Add the butter three minutes before removing from heat.

Brew

  1. Place ground coffee in a filter and wet it with cold water. Let it sit for five minutes.

  2. Insert the filter into the pot. Fill the pot with boiling water. Keep the water hot without boiling.

  3. After it runs through, add water to make one quart of coffee.

  4. Combine one cup of ground coffee, the egg or fish-skin, and one quart of water in a coffee pot. Boil for ten minutes. Pour a cupful out and back into the pot. Let it stand for ten minutes before serving.

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 + walnuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together289 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Walnut + eggtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,037 recipes

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

  5. Coffee + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,442 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Coffee
Provides the main flavour and body of the drink once roasted and brewed.
Butter
Adds fat that gives the brew a richer, smoother mouthfeel.
Egg or salt fish-skin
Added to the boiled coffee so that its proteins help settle the grounds and clarify the liquid.

The step that matters

Roast the coffee until light brown while stirring constantly. Roasting develops the coffee's flavour through browning reactions, but uneven or excessive heat can scorch the beans and make the brew bitter. Constant stirring keeps the beans colouring evenly.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Cocoafits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Almondfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against coffee, butter, egg. 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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