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 for Three
for threeIngredients
Directions
Make the coffee
Take 1 tablespoon of best Java coffee and enough Mocha to flavor it.
Break half an egg into the coffee.
Pour in a little cold water and stir well.
Add 1 pint of boiling water.
Boil and serve
Boil for 5 minutes.
Set back on the stove for 2 minutes before serving.
Clean up
Clean the coffee pot thoroughly after use to maintain flavor.
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
- Best java coffee
- Provides the main coffee flavor and body of the drink.
- Eggs
- Helps settle the coffee grounds so the finished drink is clearer.
The step that matters
Boil for 5 minutes. Boiling extracts flavor from the grounds, and the egg needs time to bind them. Boiling too long over-extracts bitter compounds, so timing matters.
“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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