Skip to main content
Drink

Boiled Coffee

A beverage made by boiling coffee with egg white, water, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Boiled Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Make the coffee

  1. In a pot, combine coffee and egg white.

  2. Add cold water and mix well.

  3. Pour in the desired amount of boiling water.

  4. Boil for 3 to 4 minutes.

  5. Remove from heat and add a little cold water to settle.

  6. Steep for a few minutes before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve with warm 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 + 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

Coffee
Provides the main flavour and aroma of the drink.
Egg white
Binds fine grounds and helps clarify the brew, leaving it less cloudy.
Warm milk
Softens the bitterness and adds creaminess when served.

The step that matters

Boil for 3 to 4 minutes. Boiling extracts flavour from the grounds quickly, but over-boiling can make the coffee taste harsh and bitter. Timing matters, and the cold water added afterward helps 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.

You might also like

Brown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesEgg CoffeeEgg Coffee20 recipesCoffee MilkCoffee Milk12 recipesPostum CoffeePostum Coffee9 recipes