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Drink

After-dinner Coffee

A coffee beverage made by mixing coffee, raw egg, and cold water, then adding boiling water and straining.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

After-dinner Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Brew

  1. Mix the coffee, raw egg, and cold water in a bowl.

  2. Pour the boiling water over the mixture, stir, and cover closely.

  3. Let it boil briefly, then remove from heat immediately.

  4. Allow to stand for a few minutes to settle.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain into a hot coffee pot through a wet cheesecloth on a wire strainer.

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

Coffee
Supplies the main flavor, aroma and body of the drink.
Raw egg
Coagulates around the grounds to trap them and clarify the liquid.

The step that matters

Remove from heat immediately after brief boiling. Prolonged boiling over-extracts bitter compounds from the grounds and can break up the egg raft that clarifies the coffee, leaving it 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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