Name: How to Make Coffee
Ingredients: 1 heaping cup of coffee; ⅓ of a raw egg; ½ cup cold water; 1 quart boiling water

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 ↓

How to Make Coffee

Ingredients

1 heaping cup of coffee
⅓ of a raw egg
½ cup cold water
1 quart boiling water

Directions

Combine the coffee, raw egg, and cold water in a pot.
Add the boiling water and bring to a boil.
Allow to settle, then strain through a cheesecloth.
Serve immediately for best flavor.

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.

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: Provides the main flavor and aroma of the drink.
Raw egg: Its proteins bind to the coffee grounds as they heat, helping them settle out for a clearer brew.

“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.