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 ↓
Boiled Coffee
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Mix the coffee, salt, egg white, and shell in a bowl. Add the cold water and mix well.
Pour the mixture into a scalded coffee pot and add the boiling water.
Fill the spout with soft paper.
Boil and settle
Boil gently for 3 to 5 minutes, then remove from heat.
Pour out a little coffee to clear the spout. Return the spout to the pot.
Let it stand for 3 minutes to settle.
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
- Coarsely ground coffee
- Provides the coffee flavor and body that the brew extracts.
- Egg white and shell
- Its proteins and shell particles bind the grounds and clarify the brewed coffee as they set.
The step that matters
Boil gently for 3 to 5 minutes. Boiling vigorously can churn the grounds back into the liquid and cloud the coffee. A gentle boil extracts flavor while the egg white and shell rise with the grounds, so the clarifying layer can settle.
“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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