French Coffee
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Have a biggin pot, preferably a French Grecque, available in various sizes and prices.
Freshly roast and grind the coffee.
Allow two cupfuls of ground coffee to two cupfuls of boiling water.
Scald the biggin, which should have perforated tin strainers, not linen.
Brew and serve
Put the coffee into the biggin and pour the boiling water over it.
Shut the lid, place the pot near the fire, and wait until the coffee drains through the strainers into the receiver below the spout.
Scald a china or silver pot and pour the brewed coffee into it.
For milk coffee, boil milk or cream separately, bring it to the table in a covered vessel, and pour it hot into the coffee; do not boil milk with the coffee.
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. See the original page.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Ground coffee
- Provides the main flavour; freshly roasted and ground coffee gives the brew its aroma.
The step that matters
Scald the biggin. Warming the pot before brewing keeps the water near boiling temperature during steeping, so the coffee extracts evenly rather than cooling and tasting flat.
“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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