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 ↓
French Coffee, No, 2
Ingredients
Directions
Brew
Place the ground coffee in a flannel bag, tie the top, and put it in a coffee pot.
Pour 3 pints of water over the bag and boil for 10 minutes.
If using an egg, break it (shell and all) into the coffee grounds and mix thoroughly before boiling.
Serve
Serve the coffee in another coffee pot.
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.
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Coffee + eggtop 29% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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 flavor and body of the brew, extracted into the hot water.
- Egg
- Its proteins gather fine grounds as the coffee heats, so they settle and the brew clears.
The step that matters
Mixing the egg into the grounds before boiling. The egg must be mixed thoroughly into the grounds before heating. As the coffee heats, the egg proteins set and trap fine particles, which clears the brew. If the egg stays in clumps, the proteins cannot spread through the grounds and the coffee stays cloudy.
“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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