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Drink

Boiled Coffee

A beverage made by boiling coffee with egg white, eggshell, 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 ↓

Boiled Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the egg white slightly and mix in the crushed eggshell and 4 cups of cold water.

  2. Add the finely ground coffee and stir together.

Brew and settle

  1. Pour the mixture into a scalded coffee pot and add 3 cups of boiling water.

  2. Boil for 5 minutes, then remove from heat.

  3. Pour out 1 cup of coffee and return it to the pot, letting it stand for 5 minutes to settle.

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 white
Binds to the coffee grounds and helps clarify the brew as it cooks.
Crushed eggshell
Attracts loose grounds and helps settle sediment so the coffee runs clearer.
Finely ground coffee
Provides the main coffee flavour and aroma as it steeps in the hot water.

The step that matters

Boil for 5 minutes, then remove from heat. Boiling extracts flavour from the grounds, but over-boiling can make the coffee bitter and cloudy. Timing the boil and stopping the heat lets the grounds 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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