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Drink

Boiled Coffee

A beverage made by boiling coffee with egg white and eggshell, then adding cold water.

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

Boiled Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the coffee with ½ cup cold water, egg white, and crushed eggshell.

  2. Add 5 cups of boiling water and boil for 8 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and pour out 1 cup of coffee, then return the coffee to the pot.

  4. Add ½ cup cold water and let it settle for 5 minutes.

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

Coarsely ground coffee
Provides the main flavour and body of the brew.
Egg white
Binds fine grounds and helps clarify the liquid as it cooks.
Crushed eggshell
Adds fine particles that attract grounds, helping them settle out of the coffee.

The step that matters

Adding the cold water and letting it settle. Cold water drops the temperature and lets the grounds sink, which clears the coffee. Settling needs the full five minutes undisturbed, or grounds stay suspended and the cup turns cloudy.

“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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