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Drink

Picnic Coffee

A coffee beverage made by mixing coffee, eggs, and water, then cooking slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Picnic Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the coffee and eggs (shells included) in a bowl, then stir well with a spoon.

  2. Add 2 gallons of cold water.

  3. Cook slowly, allowing it to boil up once or twice.

  4. Move to the back of the stove.

  5. Add 1 cup of cold water and pour out a little to check for grounds.

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

Eggs
Egg whites and shells bind fine coffee grounds so they settle, clarifying the brew.
Coffee
Provides the main flavour and aroma; the grounds are what the eggs help clear from the liquid.

The step that matters

Cook slowly and move off the heat. Gentle heat lets the egg and grounds clump and settle rather than cloud the liquid. Boiling too hard or too long keeps grounds suspended and can make the coffee bitter.

“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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