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Drink

Proper Use of Coffee

A method for preparing coffee beans with egg white and clarified butter, then steeping in hot water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Coffee and beans work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 289 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Proper Use of Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Roast the coffee beans until lightly browned, avoiding dark roasting.

  2. Rub the roasted beans with egg white.

  3. Rub the roasted beans with clarified butter.

  4. Store the beans in a dry place.

  5. Grind the coffee beans finely, but not to a floury texture.

Brew

  1. Place a well-cleaned flannel cloth or double layer of cheesecloth over a pot.

  2. Add the ground coffee to the cloth.

  3. Tie the cloth securely.

  4. Pour 1 cup of hot water over the coffee.

  5. Let the coffee steep for 1 minute.

  6. Pour boiling water over the coffee as desired.

  7. Use 1 heaping teaspoon of fresh-ground coffee per ordinary-sized cup.

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 + beanstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together289 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,799 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Coffee + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,442 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. 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 beans
Provide the flavour and aroma that the brew is built on.
Egg white
Adds a thin coating to the roasted beans as a binding layer for the fat.
Clarified butter
Adds a fat coating to the beans, which can carry aroma and soften the bitter edge.

The step that matters

Grind the coffee finely, but not to a floury texture. Grind size controls how quickly water extracts flavour. Too fine a grind over-extracts and turns bitter, while a coarse grind under-extracts and tastes weak.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (coffee, egg, butter):

  1. Cocoafits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against coffee, egg, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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