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 ↓
Art of Making Coffee
Ingredients
Directions
Make the coffee
Place the ground coffee in a cylindrical coffee pot with the spout near the top.
Pour boiling water over the coffee.
Set the pot over a slow fire or lamp.
Watch for small bubbles to form, then a large hemispherical bubble will appear.
When the bubble bursts, remove the pot from the fire.
Clarify and serve
Optionally, add the egg white and isinglass or hartshorn shavings to the coffee.
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.
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Coffee + eggtop 29% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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 coffee flavour and aroma that the water extracts.
- Egg white
- Optionally helps clarify the coffee by binding fine grounds as it sets.
The step that matters
Removing the pot when the bubble bursts. Keeping the coffee over the heat after the large bubble forms can over-extract and scorch it, leaving it bitter and burnt-tasting.
“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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