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 ↓
To Make Coffee
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the coffee
Roast the coffee until it is an even, rich brown.
Do not grind the coffee too fine.
For each cup of coffee, use 1 tablespoon of ground coffee.
Brew
In a coffee boiler, combine the ground coffee, egg white, and just enough cold water to mix.
Pour boiling water over the mixture.
For 6 tablespoons of coffee, add 3 pints of water and boil for 20 minutes.
Set aside and add 1 teacup of cold water to settle the grounds.
Transfer the coffee to the urn.
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.
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Coffee + eggtop 29% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Ground coffee
- Provides the main coffee flavor and aroma that the brew extracts.
- Egg white
- Binds to the grounds as it cooks, helping them settle and clarifying the brewed coffee.
The step that matters
Do not grind the coffee too fine. Very fine grounds pack tightly and release bitter compounds during boiling, and they are harder to settle out of the liquid, leaving the coffee cloudy and harsh.
“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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