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Coffee for Fifty Cups

A method for brewing coffee for fifty cups using eggs and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Coffee for Fifty Cups

fifty cups

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the coffee and eggs (shells included) with the cold water.

  2. Pour the mixture over the boiling water.

  3. Let it boil for 5 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and add the cold water to settle the coffee.

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
Provides the main flavor and aroma of the brew.
Eggs
Egg whites and shells bind the grounds and help clarify the liquid.

The step that matters

Remove from heat and add the cold water to settle the coffee.. Cold water lowers the temperature and weight of the liquid so the grounds sink. Skipping this step or adding the water while still boiling leaves fine grounds suspended, making the coffee cloudy and 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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