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 Number Two
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the coffee
Parch the coffee with ½ teaspoon lard until you can break the grains, stirring constantly.
Grind the coffee to your desired consistency.
Make the brew
In a bowl, mix 1 teacup of coffee and the egg white to form a paste with cold water.
Transfer the paste to a pot and add 3 pints of boiling water.
Boil for 5 minutes, then pour a cup back into the pot and let it sit for a few minutes before serving.
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.
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Coffee + eggtop 29% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Egg white
- Binds the ground coffee into a paste and helps clarify the brew by collecting fine particles.
The step that matters
Boiling with the egg white paste. The egg white must be fully mixed into the coffee paste before boiling. Once heated, the egg white coagulates and gathers loose grounds, which settle so the liquid comes out clear rather than cloudy.
“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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