Skip to main content
Drink

Coffee and Egg

A beverage made by mixing coffee, egg, and warm water, then boiling until clear.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Coffee and Egg

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brew

  1. In a basin, combine the coffee and the egg (including the shell).

  2. Mix until it reaches a thick batter consistency.

  3. Add the warm water and transfer to a coffee pot.

Boil and settle

  1. Bring to a boil and allow it to break three times.

  2. Let it stand for a few minutes until clear.

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.

  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

Coffee
Provides the main flavor and body of the brew.
Egg
Its proteins bind to fine coffee particles and collect them, clarifying the brew.

The step that matters

Bringing to a boil and letting it break three times. Boiling denatures and sets the egg proteins so they bind the grounds into a crust; boiling too vigorously or stirring can break that crust and leave the coffee 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.

You might also like

Brown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesCoffee MilkCoffee Milk12 recipesPostum CoffeePostum Coffee9 recipesBreakfast CoffeeBreakfast Coffee9 recipes