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Drink

To Make Coffee

A method for making coffee with egg white and cold water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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To Make Coffee

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 ↓

To Make Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine ground coffee, boiling water, egg white, and crushed shell in a pot.

  2. Stir well and add cold water to clarify.

  3. Boil for 15 minutes, then let it sit to settle.

  4. Pour into a well-scalded coffee pot and serve.

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 + 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

Ground coffee
Provides the coffee flavor and aroma that the brew extracts into the water.
Egg white
Binds to fine grounds as it cooks, helping them clump and settle so the coffee runs clear.

The step that matters

Boil for 15 minutes, then let it sit to settle. The egg white must cook and coagulate while the grounds are held in it; boiling too hard or skipping the rest can stir the sediment back in and leave the coffee 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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