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Drink

Making Coffee

A method of brewing coffee using a patent pot or cloth sack, optional egg or codfish skin, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Making Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Use a patent pot or a cloth sack for the coffee powder.

  2. For each person, use 1 teaspoon of coffee powder and ½ pint of water.

  3. If using an egg, mix it with the coffee powder.

  4. You can also use crushed egg shells.

  5. Alternatively, use washed and dried codfish skin, moisten it with cold water.

Brew

  1. In a heated coffee boiler, pour in half the boiling water needed.

  2. Boil for five minutes, stirring down from the top and sides.

  3. Then simmer for 10-15 minutes on low heat.

  4. Add the remaining boiling water 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.

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 powder
Provides the main coffee flavour and aroma when steeped in hot water.
Egg
Mixed with the coffee powder to help clarify the brew, settling grounds.

The step that matters

Simmering the brew. Boiling then simmering on low heat extracts flavour from the grounds. Too vigorous a boil can make the coffee bitter and cloudy, so keep the heat gentle.

“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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