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To Make Coffee

A method for brewing coffee using fresh ground beans, boiling water, isinglass, and optional sugar or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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

Brew

  1. Place 2 ounces of fresh-ground coffee in a coffee pot.

  2. Pour 8 cups of boiling water over the coffee.

  3. Let it boil for 6 minutes.

  4. Pour out a cupful 2 or 3 times.

  5. Return it to the pot.

  6. Add 2-3 isinglass chips.

  7. Pour 1 large spoonful of boiling water on top.

  8. Boil for an additional 5 minutes.

Settle and serve

  1. Set the pot by the fire to keep hot for 10 minutes before serving.

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

Isinglass chips
Collagen-based fining agent that clears the coffee by binding fine particles so they settle out.
Fresh-ground coffee
Provides the main flavour and aroma compounds that are extracted into the boiling water.

The step that matters

Pour out a cupful 2 or 3 times. Repeatedly lifting and returning the boiling coffee mixes the grounds through the liquid and helps extract flavour, so the pour-backs should be done steadily rather than skipped.

“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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