French Coffee
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
In a bowl, combine the ground coffee with ½ pint of cold water and let it sit for 15 minutes.
Bring the remaining 3 pints of water to a boil.
Brew
Strain the coffee mixture through a fine sieve into a French coffee pot.
Place the coffee grounds in the strainer at the top of the French pot.
Slowly pour the boiling water over the coffee grounds.
Set the coffee pot on the stove for 5 minutes without boiling.
Remove from heat and add the cold water from the bowl to settle the coffee.
Serve
Serve the coffee in another 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
What each ingredient does
- Ground coffee
- Provides the flavour compounds that are extracted into the water.
- Water
- Acts as the solvent that draws flavour out of the coffee grounds.
The step that matters
Set the coffee pot on the stove without boiling. Keeping the coffee just below a boil avoids over-extraction. Boiling pulls out excess bitter compounds, making the coffee harsh and astringent.
“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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