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Drink

Coffee

A method of making coffee using boiling water, ground coffee, egg white, eggshell, and cold water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a coffee pot, pour in 1 quart of boiling water.

  2. Mix 1 cup of ground coffee with the egg white, eggshell, and a little cold water.

  3. Add this mixture to the boiling water and boil for 10 minutes.

  4. Stir in ½ cup of cold water and let it sit for 5 minutes to settle.

  5. Carefully pour the coffee into your metal or china coffee pot or urn.

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 main coffee flavor and aroma once steeped in the hot water.
Egg white
Binds fine grounds and helps them clump so they settle out of the brewed coffee.

The step that matters

Adding the coffee mixture to the boiling water. The egg white and eggshell need to be spread evenly through the grounds so they can trap fine particles. Boiling then coagulates the egg white, which carries the grounds down to clarify the coffee. Stirring in the cold water and letting it settle helps the sediment fall out.

“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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