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. No. 1
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Beat the egg white with the cold water.
Mix the egg white with the ground coffee.
Brew
Pour boiling water over the mixture.
Boil once, then remove from heat.
Place back on heat until it comes to a boil again.
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
- Egg white
- Coagulates when heated, trapping coffee grounds so the brew becomes clearer.
- Ground coffee
- Provides the main coffee flavour and aroma once extracted into the hot water.
- Boiling water
- Acts as the solvent that extracts flavour from the coffee grounds.
The step that matters
Boil again until the egg white sets. The egg white must coagulate fully with the grounds during the second boil; if it does not set, the grounds stay suspended and the coffee stays cloudy.
“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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