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Drink

Coffee

A coffee beverage made with ground coffee, beaten egg, and water, boiled and served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Coffee

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grind the coffee.

  2. Scald the coffee boiler.

Brew the coffee

  1. Mix the coffee with the beaten egg and cold water, shaking well.

  2. Add the pint of cold water.

  3. Place the pot on the fire.

  4. When near boiling, pour in the quart of boiling water.

  5. Stir the mixture.

  6. Let it boil gently for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  7. Add the tablespoon of cold water.

  8. Set aside for 5 minutes.

Serve

  1. Scald the coffee pot.

  2. Pour the coffee into the pot.

  3. Serve immediately.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

Ground coffee
Provides the main coffee flavour and aroma that the brew extracts.
Egg
Binds fine grounds as it cooks, helping them settle so the coffee runs clearer.

The step that matters

Let it boil gently for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Boiling extracts coffee flavour, but a hard boil can make it bitter and cloud it. Gentle heat with stirring keeps the egg settling the grounds without over-extracting.

“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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