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Drink

Coffee for Five

A coffee beverage made with beaten egg, boiled water, and a pinch of salt, served warm with milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Coffee for Five

Ingredients

Directions

Make the coffee

  1. Mix the beaten egg with the coffee in a little cold water.

  2. Pour in the boiling water and stir from the sides as it boils.

  3. Let it boil for ten minutes.

  4. Add a little cold water to settle it.

Serve

  1. Keep it warm but do not let it boil.

  2. Add the salt and serve with hot, but not boiled, milk.

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

Egg
Its proteins coagulate and bind fine coffee grounds, clarifying the brew as it heats.
Brown coffee
Provides the main coffee flavour and aroma of the drink.

The step that matters

Pour in the boiling water and stir from the sides as it boils. The egg must be stirred into the hot liquid evenly so it sets into fine curds that grab the grounds. Stirring from the sides keeps the egg from clumping or cooking in one spot.

“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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