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Drink

Boiled Coffee

A beverage made by boiling water with ground coffee, egg white, and eggshell, then adding cold water and serving with boiled milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Coffee and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,202 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Boiled Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a coffee pot, mix the ground coffee with the egg white.

  2. Add the crushed eggshell to the pot.

  3. Pour in 5 cups of freshly boiled water.

Brew and serve

  1. Close the lid and spout tightly.

  2. Boil for 3 minutes.

  3. Add ⅓ cup of cold water to settle the coffee.

  4. Move the pot aside to keep it hot but not boiling for 10 to 15 minutes.

  5. Serve immediately with boiled milk.

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 + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. 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 main coffee flavour and body that the brew extracts.
Egg white
Binds to fine grounds so they clump and settle, clearing the liquid.

The step that matters

Move the pot aside to settle the coffee. The pot must stay hot but not boil, so the grounds can sink gently. Boiling again would stir them back up and leave 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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