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Good Coffee

A coffee brewed with boiling water, ground coffee, egg white, eggshell, and 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

Brew

  1. In a coffee pot, combine 1 quart of boiling water with 1 cup of ground coffee, the egg white, and the eggshell.

  2. Add a little cold water and boil the mixture for 10 minutes.

Settle and serve

  1. After boiling, add ½ cup of cold water and let it sit for 5 minutes to settle.

  2. Carefully pour the coffee into a metal or china coffee pot or urn.

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 flavor and aroma that the water extracts during boiling.
Egg white
As it heats, it coagulates and traps fine grounds, helping the coffee run clearer.
Cold water
Added after boiling, it cools the brew so the grounds sink and settle.

The step that matters

Pour carefully after settling. Once the grounds have settled, pouring slowly and steadily keeps them on the bottom. Stirring or jarring the pot can lift them back into the coffee and make it cloudy.

“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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