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Drink

Good Coffee

A hot beverage made by boiling coffee with egg white and optional milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Good Coffee

Why it works: Coffee and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,202 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Good Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Make the coffee

  1. Scald the coffee pot well.

  2. Add a heaping teaspoon of coffee and the egg white to the pot.

  3. Pour in the boiling water and mix well.

  4. Let it boil for 3 to 5 minutes.

  5. Keep it hot on the back of the stove for up to 10 minutes before serving.

Variations and serving

  1. For after dinner coffee, use double the amount of coffee.

  2. For coffee with scalded milk, bring the milk to a boil and mix with the coffee 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. 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
Its proteins bind the coffee grounds and help them settle, clarifying the brew.
Coffee
Provides the main flavour and strength of the drink.
Milk
Adds richness and mellows the coffee's bitterness when used for scalded milk coffee.

The step that matters

Let it boil for 3 to 5 minutes. Boiling with the egg white lets the protein coagulate and carry the grounds to the top, clearing the liquid. Boiling too briefly leaves the coffee cloudy and gritty, while boiling too long can make it bitter.

“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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