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Good Coffee

A coffee beverage made by mixing beaten egg with cold water, then adding boiling water and finishing with cold water.

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

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 ↓

Good Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brew

  1. Beat the egg (yolk and white) well.

  2. Mix the beaten egg with 1 pint of cold water and pour into the coffee boiler.

  3. Add 2 quarts of boiling water to the boiler.

Boil and finish

  1. Boil for 15 minutes.

  2. Remove the boiler from heat and pour in 1 cup of cold water.

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 + 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

Ground coffee
Provides the main coffee flavor and aroma that the brew extracts.
Egg
Its proteins set as the brew heats, trapping grounds so the coffee comes out clear.

The step that matters

Pour in the cold water after removing from heat. Stopping the boil and adding cold water cools the brew so the coagulated egg and grounds settle to the bottom instead of staying suspended, giving a clear cup.

“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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