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Drink

Boiled Coffee

A beverage made by boiling coffee with egg shell, egg white, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Boiled Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Measure the ground coffee and moisten it with a little cold water.

  2. Add the shell and a little of the egg white to the coffee.

Make the coffee

  1. Put the mixture into a heated coffee pot and pour on the boiling water.

  2. Boil for 5 minutes, then add the cold water.

  3. Move to a cooler part of the range and let it stand for a few minutes before serving.

Serve

  1. Reheat just before serving for improved 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.

  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

Coffee
Supplies the flavor compounds that the boiling water draws out.
Egg white
Binds with the fine grounds so they clump and settle, leaving a clearer cup.
Egg shell
Adds particles that help trap loose grounds as the coffee settles.

The step that matters

Let the coffee stand off the boil. Standing in a cooler spot lets the egg-bound grounds settle to the bottom. Keeping the pot from boiling again prevents the grounds from being stirred back up and clouding the coffee.

“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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