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Good Coffee

A coffee beverage made by mixing beaten egg with cold water, then boiling with water and cooling.

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

Good Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the egg mixture

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg (both yolk and white) well.

  2. Mix the beaten egg with 1 pint of cold water.

  3. Pour the mixture into a coffee boiler.

Brew and finish

  1. Add 2 quarts of boiling water to the boiler.

  2. Let it boil for 15 minutes.

  3. Remove the boiler from heat and pour in 1 cup of cold water.

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

Egg
Egg proteins coagulate during boiling and bind fine grounds so they settle, clarifying the brew.
Ground coffee
Provides the coffee flavour and aroma that the brew is built on.

The step that matters

Remove the boiler from heat and pour in 1 cup of cold water.. Removing the pot from heat stops the boil, and the cold water cools the liquid so the egg-bound grounds can settle. Adding it while still boiling would keep the grounds churning and make the coffee cloudier.

“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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