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Drink

French Coffee

A coffee brewed by steeping grounds in cold water, then adding boiling water and cold water to settle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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French Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the grounds

  1. Place coffee grounds in a bowl and pour ½ pint of cold water over them.

  2. Let stand for 15 minutes.

Brew

  1. Bring the remaining water to a boil.

  2. Strain the soaked coffee grounds through a fine sieve into a French coffee pot.

  3. Slowly pour the boiling water over the coffee grounds.

  4. Set the coffee pot on the stove for 5 minutes without boiling.

Settle and serve

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

  2. Serve the coffee in another pot.

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

What each ingredient does

Coffee
Supplies the flavor compounds that dissolve into the hot water during steeping.
Water
Acts as the solvent that extracts flavor from the grounds and carries it into the cup.

The step that matters

Keep the coffee below a boil while it sits on the stove. Boiling over-extracts the grounds and can make the coffee bitter, while gentle heat lets the grounds settle.

“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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