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Drink

To Make Coffee

A method for brewing coffee using water, ground coffee, and an egg white or alternative clarifying agent.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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

Make the coffee

  1. Add the coffee to a pot that holds three pints of water.

  2. Add the egg white or isinglass or fish skin.

  3. Pour boiling water over the mixture and boil for 5-6 minutes.

  4. Pour a little coffee from the spout to remove grounds, then pour it back into the pot.

  5. Let it sit for 8-10 minutes without boiling.

Serve with milk

  1. If no cream is available, boil milk in a saucepan and stir occasionally until ready.

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 flavour and aroma of the drink.
Egg white
Its proteins bind to fine grounds so they settle and the coffee clears.

The step that matters

Letting it sit without boiling. Boiling again after the clearing agent has been added would break up the settled grounds and cloud the coffee, so it should stand undisturbed for the full time.

“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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