Name: Coffee.— Mrs. Knox.
Ingredients: 2 teacups ground coffee; 1 beaten egg; 1 pint cold water; 1 quart boiling water; ½ cup rich boiled milk (optional)

Why it works: Coffee and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,202 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Coffee.— Mrs. Knox.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Stir the beaten egg into the ground coffee.
Cover with cold water and place on the stove until it boils.

Brew and serve

Pour in the boiling water and let it stand at boiling point for 5 minutes.
Pour ½ cup from the spout to remove the grounds.
Serve hot, optionally with rich boiled milk.

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.

Coffee + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,202 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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 flavour and aroma that the water extracts into the drink.
Beaten egg: Helps settle the coffee grounds so the finished drink is clearer.

The step that matters

Pour ½ cup from the spout to remove the grounds. Pouring from the spout first lets the loose grounds settle at the bottom, so the first pour from the spout, taken off the top, is cleaner. Pouring the grounds out too early, or disturbing the pot, can leave sediment in the cup.

“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.