Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
Coffee
Ingredients
Directions
Make the coffee
In a bowl, stir the ground coffee with the egg and the eggshell, then add the cold water.
Transfer the mixture to a coffee boiler and pour in the boiling water.
As it rises and begins to boil, stir it down with a silver spoon or fork.
Boil hard for 10 to 12 minutes.
Remove from heat and pour out a cup of coffee, then pour it back into the coffee pot.
Place the pot on the back of the stove to keep hot without boiling; it will settle in about 5 minutes.
Serve
Serve hot with good cream and lump sugar.
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.
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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Coffee + creamtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,339 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).
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Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together4,344 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together42,166 recipes
Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
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 flavour and aroma that the water extracts during boiling.
- Egg
- Its white binds to the grounds and collects them, helping the liquid settle clear.
- Cold water
- Wets the grounds evenly before the boiling water is added.
The step that matters
Stirring down as it rises. Stirring the foam back into the liquid keeps the grounds wet and evenly extracted. Letting it boil over loses flavour and makes the coffee bitter or weak.
“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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