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To Make Coffee

A coffee brewed with egg white, simmered for 15‑20 minutes, then cooled slightly before serving.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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To Make 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 ↓

To Make Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine 2 heaping tablespoons of ground coffee with 1 pint of water in a pot.

  2. Stir in the egg white and dampen with cold water.

Brew

  1. Pour boiling water over the mixture and let it boil for 15 to 20 minutes, keeping it covered to retain steam and aroma.

  2. Reserve one-third of the coffee and add it 5 minutes before removing from the stove.

Settle and serve

  1. Remove from heat and add a little cold water to help settle the grounds.

  2. Let it stand for a moment before serving.

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 coffee flavor and aroma that the brew extracts into the water.
Egg white
Binds to the coffee grounds and draws them together, helping the liquid clear as it cooks.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg white and dampening with cold water. The egg white must be evenly mixed through the grounds before heating. If it clumps or is left unmixed, it cannot gather the fine particles, so the coffee stays cloudy and gritty.

“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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