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Drink

Coffee From Cold Water

A beverage made by boiling cold water with coffee, optionally an egg or eggshell, then adding cold water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 From Cold Water

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine 1 pint of cold water with 2 tablespoons of coffee.

  2. Heat the mixture until it reaches boiling point, then keep it very hot and simmering for 15 minutes.

  3. If using, mix the egg or crushed eggshell with the coffee before heating.

  4. When removing from the stove, quickly pour in ½ teacup of cold water unless pouring into a coffeepot.

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. 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

Coffee
Supplies the main flavor and aroma that the water extracts from the grounds.
Cold water
Acts as the solvent that slowly draws flavor out of the coffee grounds.
Egg or eggshell
Binds fine grounds together so they settle, clearing the finished coffee.

The step that matters

Adding the cold water off the heat. Pouring in the cold water quickly as the pot leaves the stove cools the liquid and helps the grounds settle. Stirring or pouring slowly afterward can stir the grounds back up and cloud the coffee.

“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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