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Drink

Boiling Coffee

A method of preparing coffee by boiling water over ground coffee and egg white, then straining.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Tea and coffee work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 259 recipes. Both carry 2-methyl-3-(methyldithio)furan, which smells thiamin, meat. The science ↓

Boiling Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grind the coffee and place it in a tin pot.

Make the coffee

  1. Add ½ tea-cup of cold water and the white of ½ egg; shake to mix.

  2. Pour boiling water over the mixture and let it stand close to the fire until it just comes to a boil.

  3. Stir gently and maintain a boiling heat for 5 to 10 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and add ½ tea-cup of water to settle the coffee.

  5. Let it stand for 5 minutes, then pour it off.

  6. For a finer result, strain through a thin linen cloth before serving.

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. Tea + coffeetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methyl-3-(methyldithio)furan (thiamin, meat).

  2. Coffee + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,239 recipes

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

  3. Tea + eggtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together821 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (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 fine coffee grounds into clumps as it sets, so they settle and clarify the liquid.

The step that matters

Stir gently and maintain a boiling heat for 5 to 10 minutes. Gentle stirring keeps the egg white clumping with the grounds rather than breaking them up. Holding a steady boil lets the coffee extract and the egg white set, so the grounds can 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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