Skip to main content
Drink

To Make Coffee

This recipe describes how to brew coffee using boiling water and isinglass chips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓
To Make Coffee

Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

To Make Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Make the coffee

  1. Put the coffee into a coffee pot.

  2. Pour boiling water over the coffee and let it boil for 6 minutes.

  3. Pour out a cupful 2-3 times and return it to the pot.

Clarify and rest

  1. Add isinglass chips and a large spoonful of boiling water.

  2. Boil for 5 more minutes.

  3. Keep hot by the fire for 10 minutes.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Coffee + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,339 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Fresh ground coffee
Provides the main coffee flavour and aroma that the water extracts.
Isinglass chips
Fining agent that helps settle fine particles so the coffee clears.

The step that matters

Pouring out a cupful and returning it to the pot. Repeating this pour-back circulates the brewing liquid through the grounds, evening out extraction and helping the coffee clarify before fining.

“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.

More coffee recipes

You might also like